


A Goat for Azazel

by Hagar, SailorSol



Category: NCIS
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captivity, Dark, Death Wish, Depression, Disturbing Themes, Emotional Manipulation, Episode: s06e25 Aliyah, Episode: s07e01 Truth or Consequences, Families of Choice, Gen, HaYamin HaNora'im | The Days Of Awe, Intrigue, Original Character(s), POV Multiple, PTSD, Recovery, Suspense, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-21
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-29 21:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 68,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Goes AU after <i>Aliyah.</i> When Tony disappears two days before the Saleem op is a go, the team scrambles to find him - and to understand what an associate of La Grenouille and Israeli domestic intelligence have to do with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Edge

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters without warnings are rated T and contain canon-typical situations, violence and language. A total of five chapters are rated M. As these chapters cannot be skipped, the story is rated M overall.
> 
>  **Story does not contain:** sexual content, major violence, graphical depictions of violence.
> 
>  **Story contains:** captivity situations and associated themes, intense themes of depression and PTSD (all chapters should be considered to have at least some of this), a handful of F-words.
> 
> Conversations between Israeli characters are rendered in English for the readers' benefit.
> 
> Beta by LoveChilde and Mara Aoife.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Ziva left behind in Israel, Team Gibbs is one person short. Or, depending on your math, two.

## Arc One: Hall of Mirrors

_May_

 

It didn’t seem quite real, yet: the elevator, the cool air, the weight of his bag. The last thing that had been real was his words, _One short, Boss?_ and the wordless grimace that was Gibbs’ only reply. Fourteen hours later Tony was still stuck in that moment, still waiting for a different answer, but none presented itself.

The elevator’s doors opened into the half-lit squad room. It was empty except for the few people bunched together in Team Gibbs’ aisle: Tim standing by Tony’s desk and the top of Abby’s black-haired head showing up at -

Tony’s heart froze. Abby’s voice rang out loud, but the words took a moment to decipher over the _One short, Boss?_ and the silence still fresh, still ringing in Tony’s ears.

“Where are they?” Abby said, and the plural might as well have been a blow.

The “Right behind you,” was automatic, but Tony didn’t have enough in him to make it not sound like lines read by rote.

Abby was too excited to notice. She swiveled around as she pushed herself up. “Welcome back!”

“What the -” he tried to say, but Abby’s arms were quicker than his words. “Ugh.”

“Sorry,” she said, but her grin was unrepentant.

He couldn’t even stand to look at it. “Missed you too, Abs,” he said distractedly, trying to delay the moment as he made his way to his desk. The chair was right there, and he was tired.

His chair that had Jimmy in it, getting up and shuffling away. “Tony.”

“Jimmy,” Tony acknowledged, and crashed down.

“So,” Tim said, first sound out of his mouth, “Ziva -”

_One short, Boss?_

“- is getting her stuff, or...?”

“No,” Tony said. He should meet Tim’s eyes, he knew, should have the guts to look them all in the eye when he said it, but he managed only a half-glance before staring down at his hands instead.

From a parallel reality, Abby asked: “She parking the car?”

“No,” Tony repeated.

“Well,” Tim said, impatient, “what is she doing, then?”

Stalling came easily; DC rains still seemed unreal to Tony, after days under the Israeli sun. “Well, considering the time difference,” he glanced at his watch, acutely aware of them looming above him. It felt like pushing a ton of bricks, forcing his gaze up. “Probably eating breakfast.”

Somehow it was Jimmy who asked, “She still in Tel Aviv?”

“Yeah,” Tony sighed.

“Well, when is she coming back?” Tim demanded, the old anxiety creeping into his voice.

 _One short, Boss?_ was still ringing in his ears, and Tony did not know how to say it. There was no easy way of letting people down. Eventually, though, he managed: “She’s not.”

“No,” Abby said, fiercely. “This cannot happen. Vance can _not_ do this again.”

The darkness at the edge of his vision could be exhaustion, or the belly of that plane; he could be looking up at Gibbs or maybe at Ziva, unforgiving like the sun-cooked cement against his back.

“Wasn’t Vance’s call,” he told Abby, distantly fascinated with how far away his voice sounded.

“But - if it wasn’t Vance,” Tim asked, sounding just as far, “then who?”

_One short, Boss?_

It snapped and broke, just like everything else. Tony was tired and aching and hungry, but he couldn’t feel the sun on his back, anymore. He was sitting in his familiar chair in the half-lit squad room of NCIS MCRT, arm and head throbbing in time to his pulse, three worried faces staring down at him.

He’d managed to fail everybody this time. Wasn’t this just great.

_Then who?_

But Tony might as well have left his voice in Tel Aviv.

 

* * *

 

“Come in,” Eli called out at the knock on his office’s door.

The woman who walked in was a brunette in her late twenties, just under average height, not quite slight but not quite full; her exact build was difficult to tell through the straight-cut jeans and the loose button-down shirt she’d left out of said pants. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, the tip of which touched the base of her neck.

“Yael,” Eli said, standing up to greet her. “Long time, no see.”

“You don’t live two houses down anymore, Eli,” Yael said with a slight smile as she leaned in to reply to his air-kisses with her own. “And neither do I, for that matter.”

“It’s been a long time,” he agreed, directing both of them to the sitting corner rather than the desk. “Too long. But you’re not here for that, are you?”

“Really, Eli. Is that how you put a junior agent at ease?”

“It’s how I welcome a friend,” he corrected with a smile of his own. “You were never a newbie, Yael. Perhaps when I first met you.” He indicated the height of a small child with his one hand.

Her expression remained amused. “ _Now_ you’re treating me like a newbie.”

“Bad habits,” he acknowledged. “How can I help out our brothers and sisters in the Shin-Beit today?”

“Alon e-mailed you the files yesterday.”

“Ah, yes.” He leaned back in his chair. “Interesting proposition.”

She mirrored him. “It would remove several immediate threats,” she said, “as well as generate a significant long-term boon in assets and cooperation.”

“You’re wasted on that job, Yael. You should be with us.”

“My cousins tell me how you treat your people,” she said dryly, but not without humor. “There’s enough work for everyone, Eli.”

“That is true,” he sighed. “Unfortunately.”

“If fortune had anything to do with it, we’d be out of a job.” She rose to her feet. “I’ll tell Alon we have your cooperation.”

He spread his hands to the side, but did not get up. “Yael, _really._ Stay for coffee. Explain to me again how you ever came up with this harebrained idea.”

She stopped, turned around, and made a display out of eyeing the electric kettle in the corner of the room. “ _Botz_ , Eli? Are you trying to assassinate me?”

He pushed himself up to his feet. “I believe one of the officers has an espresso machine now. It’s not a gas stove, but I hope it’ll do.”

“That depends,” she deadpanned. “Do you have cookies?”

 

* * *

 

_June_

 

Three weeks later, and Tim could almost pretend that it was life as usual. Almost. Sometimes. When Abby wasn’t standing next to his desk, reading her e-mail out loud, Ziva’s phrases sounding strange in Abby’s cadences.

“Dear Abby: I am fine. Summer in Israel is quite hot, but not as hot as some other places that I have been to, including in America. I am sorry for taking so long to reply to you. I have been catching up with old friends, and this is a difficult season for reasons other than the heat. Please give Tim and Ducky my regards.” Abby lifted her eyes from the printed e-mail. “Are you listening, Tim?”

“Of course I’m listening, Abby,” he replied, though his eyes didn’t leave his monitor. “It’s hard not to when you’re practically yelling in my ear.”

The next moment, she’d come around his desk and turned his chair around, glaring at him narrow-eyed. “That,” she pointed at the computer screen, “is not listening.”

If she hadn’t been focused on telling him off, she would’ve noticed what was on his screen. “I’m watching the video for the new Hadag Nachash song that Ziva sent me,” Tim informed her.

“Why didn’t you say so?” she demanded, predictably rolling him and his chair away and inserting herself between him and the computer, giving him a nice angle of her behind. “Let me see.”

Tim gave her an exasperated look, turned to Tony and made his serve. “Did you see that?” he asked, as annoyed as he could make it.

Tony’s reply was very nearly prompt, but his voice was as blank as the stare he gave his keyboard. “No, McGee. You are the only one who received that video.”

 _Damn it,_ Tim thought. He should’ve known Tony would go there. “I mean - ” Tim began.

Naturally, that was when Gibbs strode into view. “Grab your gear,” he informed them. “We got a dead petty officer.” He tossed Tim a pill bottle.

“Really, Boss?” Tim asked even as he moved Abby to the side and reached for his go bag. “On a ship?”

“That’s right.”

“I hate it when they do that.”

“Do what, McGee? Get murdered?”

“No,” Tim said, hurrying to catch up with Gibbs before he made it to the elevator. “I meant...”

“DiNozzo!” Gibbs snapped. “Are you coming?”

No _On your six, Boss!_ came, even though Tony would usually reply before Gibbs ever made it to the _Are you coming?_

Or, more accurately, Tony _used to_ reply promptly. When Tim turned his head back, Tony was standing between their desks, go bag held loosely in one hand as he stared in the direction of Tim’s desk. Tim’s desk, where Ziva’s video was still playing on the monitor, and Ziva’s printed e-mail lay on the desk, none of which had been addressed to Tony.

Ziva replied to Abby and initiated contact with Tim, sent Ducky photographs; Tony might as well have ceased to exist.

“DiNozzo!” Gibbs repeated and then, when Tony remained still: “Tony!”

Tony started. “Yes, Boss,” he said, not quite blankly but still off. “Coming.”

When the elevator doors closed, though, Tony’s eyes were still fixed on Tim’s desk.

 

* * *

 

_July_

 

There was only one person who knocked on Eli David’s door and then entered without waiting for verbal confirmation. And even that, only if something was urgent or otherwise wrong. Eli’s eyes lingered on Amit Hadar’s hands, rather than face, as his Head of Security walked into the room. Hadar’s face would betray nothing, but sometimes his hands would.

Hadar stopped in front of Eli’s desk. “The _Damocles_ is down,” he said without preamble, correctly interpreting Eli’s expression.

“Survivors?”

“Numbers one, two and seven. Number One is continuing with the mission; Two and Seven are injured, and headed back.”

Eli sighed inaudibly. “Best decision that could be made, under the circumstances.” There was a reason that the Mossad’s Operational Division was called _Masada_. “Course correction?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Preparing to deploy,” Hadar confirmed, and added: “The Air Force agreed to do us a favor, on this one.”

Eli nodded. The control team had to be on the ground before the primary ever made it there. The IAF always cashed back favors for twice as much as they were worth, but this operation justified that.

“Teams B and D are deploying,” Hadar continued, but his tone has shifted, speculative, withdrawn. “We have lost too many senior agents this summer.”

At that, Eli’s sigh wasn’t inaudible in the slightest. “Yes,” he agreed heavily. “We have.”

 

* * *

 

“So many tasks, so few hands,” Ducky remarked after Gibbs left, and continued, in the same semi-distracted tone he usually used for non-case related notes while examining a body: “Have either of you two heard from Ziva?”

It had been three weeks since Ziva’s last communication. Tim looked away.

“No,” said Tony from where he was standing in the hallway.

Of course if Tony would answer a question that wasn’t directed at him, it would be this one. Tim turned for a look: despite being the one of the team whose existence Ziva wholly ignored, Tony could probably quote every single message Ziva had sent any of them complete with the time stamp, down to the second.

Tony also rarely wore his heart on his sleeve, but his expression as he asked “You?” spoke volumes. The naked worry made Tim’s spine crawl.

“No,” Ducky sighed, busying himself with the yet-another-dead-petty-officer. “But, I suppose the time has come to move on...”

 _No,_ Tim thought. _It hasn’t._ Even if they had just asked Gibbs to start looking into new potential fourths for the team. That was moving on. This wasn’t. And whatever this was, it wasn’t right.

Tim stepped out of the tiny room, pushing Tony - still with that look - out of his way to get through the door and then walked in the other direction.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and climbed up through the levels of the ship until he got a decent signal. He punched in 5 on speed dial.

Abby picked up on the third ring. “Hi, McGee,” she said cheerfully.

“Hi, Abby.”

Abby sobered up immediately. “McGee? What’s wrong?”

“I think it’s time to hit the Hebrew Lab Nursery School,” he told her. “Ducky said...”

“He didn’t hear from her either,” she said. “I know.” And then, in a different, brisker tone, “What’s with the Hebrew?”

“Remember that song she sent us?”

“Yeah, it was, like, the only thing she ever sent all of us. Well, all of us except - okay, I see your point. I’m on it.”

“Thanks, Abs.”

“Don’t thank me,” she said fiercely. “We’re all her friends. Now get back to your case and leave this to me.”

 

* * *

 

The easy answer would have been to call Abby and ask her if she’d found anything about the latest meth overdose. It would have saved Tony time, too, not having to go all the way down to the lab and deal with trying to get a straight answer out of her without playing Twenty Questions. He wasn’t in the mood for Twenty Questions, but he also wasn’t in the mood to sit in the squad room any longer.

He glanced at the desk across from him. Still empty. Anger surged up again, just as hot as the first time it had managed to overcome the aching sense of loss. Ziva had chosen to stay in Israel and cut Tony out of her life, and it didn’t matter whether he’d been guilty, or just doing his damn job. She’d made it abundantly clear how she felt about him, and just like all the other times everything had blown up in his face, he would deal with it.

Besides, if he gave in to the childish urge to throw things and tip her desk over, even Gibbs wouldn’t be able to protect him from a psych eval.

So down to Abby’s lab he would go, pausing only for a moment to slide the phone on the desk across from his from one side to the other, smirking in self-satisfaction for the small act of defiance and disorder.

He wasn’t overly surprised to find McGee already down there, the two of them side by side in front of Abby’s main computer. He couldn’t quite hear what they were saying from outside the lab, though they sounded like they were arguing. He amused himself for a moment in imagining that it was a lovers’ spat. Maybe she’d made him sleep in the coffin again. Whatever they were doing, it didn’t sound like case work, because that wasn’t Abby’s usual background music coming from her computer. It wasn’t even in English, though sometimes one could hardly qualify her regular music as English.

Whatever it was, they were engrossed enough in their discussion that they hadn’t heard the elevator ding. Which meant Tony had the perfect opportunity to startle them. He strode into the lab, and in his best Gibbs Voice, demanded: “What’ve you got, Abs?” They both jumped and turned around, looking vaguely guilty, and Tony resisted the urge to grin and ruin the image.

“Oh, uh, hey, Tony,” McGee said, trying to sound casual and failing miserably. No surprise there, really. “I was just helping Abby with... uh.... the thing.”

Tony arched an eyebrow at him. “The thing, McGee?” Tony always loved watching McGee dig himself into a hole.

“Yeah, you know, the thing that Gibbs asked him to help me with,” Abby added. “With the computers. And stuff.” Tony’s day was getting better; they were trying to dig each other out, now. He gave them The Look and waited for one of them to cave. It was always just a matter of time, with these two.

Abby turned back to her computer screen, obviously trying to avoid his look, but she caved a moment later. “Okay, so we weren’t working on the case, but this was more important, and I’m sure Gibbs would understand,” she said. McGee rolled his eyes in exasperation before turning to the computer too.

“What’s more important than the case?” Tony asked. Abby and McGee exchanged another look. He’d seen that look before, the one where they were clearly trying to decide who’s turn it was to be the bearer of bad news.

“You know how Ziva has been sending the rest of us e-mail and stuff?” Abby asked, apparently being the one to draw the short straw this time.

“Yeah, Abs, you’ve been reading them out loud,” Tony replied, trying not to let the bitterness show. She’d written to the others regularly - even Palmer had received an e-mail, once. But never to Tony, never to Gibbs. He tried not to think about it too much.

“Well she hasn’t, lately. And I mean, I was worried, of course, but I figured, she’s probably busy, right? I didn’t really think about it too much, except it’s been like, three weeks, and that’s just not like Ziva. And when Tim and I realized she’d sent us the same song, we started translating it, and it probably wouldn’t have taken so long, but you guys have been busy with that case,” Abby said. Her rapid speech and the music still playing on her computer was giving Tony a headache.

“Get to the point, Abby,” Tony ordered. Abby gave him a distressed look.

“That _is_ the point. She sent us this song, and it’s...” Abby trailed off, wringing her hands together. Whatever the song was, it had her upset enough that she turned her pleading look on McGee.

“It’s about saying goodbye,” McGee finished for her. “We think -”

“ _Don’t_ say it, McGee,” Abby cut him off fiercely, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t you dare even think it. Ziva is _not_ gone.”

 _You’ll say it, but you won’t let McGee_? Tony wanted to ask, but his voice was stuck behind the giant lump that had formed in his throat. Even after he managed to swallow it down, there still seemed to be a disconnect between his brain and his mouth.

“She might just be on an op,” Tim suggested. Tony knew that tone, even through the steady pounding in his head. Tim didn’t believe what he was saying any more than anyone else in that room. “Maybe we should ask Gibbs?” Tim asked. “He might be able to find something out.”

“Good idea, McGee! And we can do some digging in the meantime,” Abby said, trying to sound upbeat. “I’ve always wanted to hack into Mossad.”

Tony nodded, though he wasn’t really hearing their words any more. He didn’t wait to see if they had anything else to say to him before he left the lab. He just needed a little fresh air to make his head stop hurting. Then maybe this mess would make sense.

 

* * *

 

The squad room, when Ducky got there, looked very much as it usually did. Tony was at his desk, typing away; Abby was sitting on the edge of Timothy’s desk, the two of them conversing quietly; and the fourth desk bore some testimony to being recently re-occupied, although the newest addition to Team Gibbs was nowhere to be seen.

This, together with the way Jethro’s voice had sounded over the phone, did not bode well.

“You wanted to see me, Jethro?” he asked as he walked up to the man’s desk.

Jethro lifted his eyes from the folder he was pretending to read, meeting Ducky’s briefly and then sliding over to Jimmy, who was trailing behind him.

“Gather around, everybody,” he called, raising his voice slightly. The quality of his voice could very nearly be mistaken for normal but Ducky knew what to listen for, these many years after, and Jethro’s voice was tight and - unless Ducky missed his mark - not from worry.

Ducky wasn’t the only one who’d heard it, either. Timothy rolled out his chair, touching Abby’s shoulder to indicate that it was for her before going and fetching the fourth chair, which he offered to Ducky.

Ducky shook his head slightly.

Timothy did not sit down, though. Rather, he turned around, considering Tony; who, for his part, was sitting on the corner of his desk, holding his elbows and seeming apprehensive. The bags under the boy’s eyes seemed to be getting darker whenever Ducky saw him. Of all of them, Tony was the most attuned to Gibbs’ moods. Indeed, more than Ducky himself sometimes. Tony’s reluctance to move closer was another ill omen.

“Tony?” Timothy asked.

Tony didn’t respond.

Timothy gave him another look, and then sat down in the empty chair. They formed a loose half-circle around Jethro’s desk: Jimmy sitting on the edge of the fourth desk, then Timothy, Ducky and Abby.

Jethro’s glance skid across the five of them. “Director Vance has been in contact with Mossad,” he said, only just loudly enough to carry to Tony. “Director David says he regrets to inform us that - ” He paused. Ducky saw his throat work as he very nearly dropped his gaze.

 _Oh, no. Oh, dear._ Ducky already knew what was coming.

“Ziva was lost on a mission,” Jethro completed, voice rough.

“What do you mean, _lost_?” Abby demanded, in the kind of anger borne of a deep-seated fear. Her shoulders were raised, fists balled, and she sounded close to tears.

“‘Lost’ as in ‘dead’, Abby,” Jethro said, face expressionless but voice reflecting the weariness of too much loss.

Gently, Ducky let his fingers touch Abby’s shoulder. Just the fingertips: it would not do to have her ire turn on him. He glanced to his left: Jimmy’s face was frozen in the open shock of one who did not receive much ill news in his life, and Timothy’s was ghostly-white and pinched with the horror of one who had heard too much.

He itched to turn around, but that was sure to make Tony bolt out of the room. Jethro’s eyes seemed to be on him, though, if Ducky had his angles right, which he usually did; and what Jethro’s face reflected was not good.

Abby stood suddenly, displacing Ducky’s hand and stomping her foot in the process. “No,” she said sharply, stubbornly. “I don’t believe it.”

“It’s what Mossad says, Abby,” Jethro said, still with the same weariness.

“We’ll see about that,” she declared, stomping off towards the elevator.

It was a natural motion, to half-turn and follow her dramatic exit. It also afforded Ducky a view of Tony. Ducky hadn’t realized he’d hoped to see him sitting in his chair and pretending to work until he saw him still on the desk-corner, still holding his elbows, but not nearly enough tone to the seemingly-uninhabited body and his expression blank and empty as well.

Ducky turned his head slightly to the right, catching Jethro’s eye. Jethro shook his, nearly imperceptibly.

“Come along, Mr. Palmer,” Ducky said heavily, forcing his old limbs to move. “We have our own dead bodies, waiting for us.”

 

* * *

 

_August_

 

Tim had seen Abby shaking for any of a number of reasons along the years. One was not very likely to be true with Abby sitting fully-clothed at the lab chair, another was unlikely with no attacker in sight, and Abby rarely laughed in complete silence. This left only one option, and it made Tim’s worry - set permanently high in decent weeks - spike.

“Abby?” he asked, stepping cautiously into the lab. It was never a good idea to startle her.

“McGee,” she replied. Her tone was bland, lacking its usual levels of enthusiasm.

Tim’s anxiety was setting new records by the second. He took the last three paces, coming to stand behind her and only slightly to the side. “Abby? What’s wrong? What happened?”

Then he saw what was on the computer monitors.

“It’s all true,” Abby said. She looked up at Tim, and there were tears on her cheeks, confirming Tim’s suspicion. Abby might be prone to emotional outbursts, but she didn’t often cry. “How could it be true?”

There was Hebrew scrolling down the monitors. Hebrew, the photo of an old Jordanian freighter Tim could recognize by sight, and meteorological maps.

 _No._ He almost said it out loud. _No, Mossad lied again._ But they did not take Mossad’s word, Ziva’s father’s word. They had hacked through the near-impossible protection on the Mossad’s server, finding their way to the files on the Saleem Ulman op. The op that had supposedly put Ziva and Kidon’s A Team on the _Damocles._ The _Damocles,_ which had supposedly gone down in a storm off the Horn of Africa.

Not ‘supposedly,’ anymore. _It’s all true._ Abby had confirmed it.

Not knowing what else to do - and his throat being too tight for words, anyway - Tim opened his arms to her.

Abby fell into his arms, sobbing.

 

* * *

 

They said that when someone died, you kept seeing them everywhere, for a while. Not just when someone died, Tony could tell them, and not every time someone did. Jeanne had haunted him for the longest time, in every woman with her ponytail, in every woman who had a gait like hers, brisk and purposeful without even the hint of stress. Kate hadn’t, though. He’d heard her voice, once, not a day after she’d died at his feet, held a conversation with the echo of her that he carried within his heart.

Then Ziva had walked into the room.

He was seeing Ziva, now.

She was a constant shadow at the edge of his vision from the moment he walked into the Navy Yard each morning until he left it in the evening, there at every crime scene making sardonic commentary. She’d been there from the moment Gibbs had delivered the notice, and Tony would not have been surprised to be told that her ghost was truly haunting the Navy Yard, haunting the team.

Haunting him.

She was on the city streets, too, winking just on the edge of his field of vision, disappearing into a store, the first time he’d seen her, or around the corner, on another. This was different, somehow: there was no strange woman where she’d been as had happened to him with Jeanne, and it was much more than the shadow he kept seeing on the job. He knew that shadow well enough to tell the difference.

Ziva was dead. Ziva had drowned, somewhere on the other side of the world. She could not possibly be walking around the streets of Washington, DC.

Ziva had just disappeared behind a passing bus.

It wasn’t as if he was sleeping much, anyway, or as if what sleep he was getting was doing him any good. Perhaps walking would tire him. Perhaps walking would chase the nightmares away.

Perhaps the next time he saw her, Ziva would not disappear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song [HaQayitz HaAcharon](%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVYvspW-8C4%E2%80%9D) ( _The Last Summer_ ) came out in 1990 and led the hit lists for over a year, breaking all sorts of records. _”I want to climb all the mountains/Visit all the lands/Discover if aliens exist/And if the dead go on living//Because it’s my last summer with you/By the first rain i’ll be gone/.../So remember you promised not to cry/Because tears are small and it’s a very big sky.”_
> 
>  _Botz_ , meaning “mud” or “sludge”, is Israeli slang for coffee prepared by pouring boiling water over coffee grounds. It is typical of military office environments, where people cannot boil coffee, do not have espresso machines, and yet snub (or, sometimes, can’t get) instant coffee.


	2. Buried in Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dead Navy lieutenant leads the team to a mysterious new weapons dealer who has alarming ties.

Somewhere in the belly of the USS _Laboon_ , Tim stood at the bottom of the ladder - stairs, really, but ships had their own language - and looked up. The angle made it impossible to see much, but Tim would not be surprised if up there, the sailors - like people everywhere - were doing a poor job of pretending to not be trying to snatch a look past the crime scene tape.

Not that there was much to see up there, anyway.

“You know what movie this reminds me of?” Tim called up to Tony at the top of the ladder, a little more loudly than intended. It was a deliberate serve: he couldn’t actually think of a movie, but he hoped Tony would fill in with his own movie reference, as he often did.

Or used to. Tim couldn’t even recall when the last time had been. Tim still made the serves, still hoped for some reaction - hoped for Tony to start acting like Tony, again - but the only reply he ever got never came from Tony.

“You plan on getting a job as a movie critic, McGee?” Gibbs barked.

Tim very carefully did not wince. “Uh, no, Boss?”

“Then quit talking about movies and get back to work.”

“Yes, Boss.”

The dead woman’s name was Sara Roberts. She was an engineer, a civilian contractor, and on board _Laboon_ to install a railgun prototype. Or she was, when she’d taken an unlucky fall down the stairs and broken her neck.

“DiNozzo!” echoed Gibbs’ voice from upstairs again.

Tim suppressed another wince at Tony’s prompt, but lifeless, “Yes, Boss.”

“Are you sketching the scene?”

“No, Boss.”

“Then sketch the scene, DiNozzo. With the body in it.”

“Yes, Boss.”

Tim sighed a little, and then turned to the witness. Lt. Rose Bryant, _Laboon_ ’s Weapons Officer, had been with Roberts when she tripped. Bryant - a wire-thin athletic woman in her late 20s, with a strong jaw and dark curls that had to be hell to manage - was waiting by the scene tape and watching the proceedings with wide, dark eyes.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, lieutenant,” he said.

“Oh, I understand. These things take time,” she said. Her voice was low, and scratchy like a smoker’s. It was also uneven and shaky, belying the calm of her words. By the looks of it, Tim suspected that she had been crying. Her eyes kept wandering over to Roberts’ body and skittering away, like a person reaching and recoiling from a hot coal.

“How well did you and Ms. Roberts know each other?” he asked.

“Sara and I started working on this project together a few months ago, interfacing between the ship and her company. We’d get drinks after work sometimes, you know? Just go out, grab dinner. I guess you could say we were friends,” Lieutenant Bryant replied.

Yeah, one could say that. “I’m very sorry,” Tim told her.

“I still can’t believe she’s dead,” she continued. “I mean, one second we were talking, and the next...”

“Can you tell me what exactly happened?” he asked.

“We’d just finished up for the afternoon and we were headed top-side. We were ahead of schedule, so we weren’t working late, and Sara wasn’t feeling well. She has - _had_ \- a cold, but she didn’t want to take anything until we were done with work. Said it made her woozy, you know?” Bryant said. Her eyes went wide and Tim wondered if she was going to start crying again. “I made her take the cold pills before we started walking. Could this be my fault?”

“You shouldn’t think like that,” he told her. “Leave that part to us, all right?”

She nodded even as she looked towards the body again, hugging herself.

“Thank you,” he told her, “and here is my card if you think of anything more, okay?” Giving her his card wasn’t strictly necessary, as this was an accidental death if Tim had ever seen one, and he supposed she would have someone else to talk to, but he put the card in her hand anyway and gently closed her fingers around it.

She offered him a watery smile in return.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs walked into Autopsy with a coffee in one hand. Ducky hadn’t called him yet, but Gibbs knew the doctor would have something for him. Contrary to what his team thought, it wasn’t a matter of knowing with his gut so much as it was a matter of having been on this job long enough to know how much time was needed to get initial findings.

“What’ve you got for me, Duck?” Gibbs asked. The medical examiner didn’t even look up from the file he was reading.

“A very bad cold, it would seem,” he said. “And a young woman who, brilliant as she might’ve been as an engineer, also seems to have been quite foolish.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Gibbs replied. Ducky was probably the best ME on the east coast, but sometimes working with him was like pulling teeth.

Ducky finally looked up from the file. “The results of Abby’s tox screen,” he said, tapping the open document lightly. “In the hours before her death, Roberts had ingested a variety of drugs, including ibuprofen, dextromethophan, doxylamine succinate, dimenhydrinate and codeine, and all of them in significant doses.”

“In English, Duck?”

“Painkillers, cold medicine and Dramamine, Jethro.”

Gibbs resisted the urge to swear. With a combination like that, and with what Ducky considered “significant doses,” the chances of this turning into a murder investigation were slowly climbing.

“You got her medical records yet?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Any history of motion sickness or a reason why she’d be taking the Dramamine?” That was probably the easiest of the three medications to eliminate a reason for her to have been taking purposely.

Ducky shook his head slightly. “There appear to be none. Jethro, at these dosages, I’d be surprised if she was straight on her feet. Granted, people often push the boundaries of safety with such common drugs, but still.”

Gibbs had seen people overdose on common meds far too often, but his gut was telling him this wasn’t necessarily the case, this time. Everything pointed in that direction, but if Roberts didn’t have a history of needing Dramamine, being on board a ship in port didn’t seem like a good enough reason to start. “Thanks, Duck,” Gibbs said, turning to leave.

“Jethro,” Ducky called out.

He stopped, but didn’t turn around. He recognized the tone of Ducky’s voice, and Gibbs wasn’t sure he wanted to have this conversation yet. “Yeah, Duck?”

There was a very audible sigh, the creek of the old swivel chair and then the sound of Ducky’s approaching footsteps. He stopped just outside Gibbs’s field of vision. “The team is still one short,” Ducky said, in that voice calculated exactly to be not too involved without being distant. “Or two, depending on how one does one’s arithmetic.”

Gibbs took a sip of his coffee to cover the moment he needed to push down the image of the look on Eli David’s face when Gibbs left Ziva on the tarmac, of Tony’s dead expression in the squad room since hearing about the _Damocles_.

“Not your problem,” Gibbs replied shortly.

“Perhaps that isn’t,” Ducky acknowledged, “but when your team suffers, Jethro, so do you; and that _is_ my concern, as your friend.”

There were several things Gibbs could have said in response to that, but most of them involved shouting and swearing and voicing the helplessness that Gibbs was pointedly trying to ignore. He couldn’t bring Ziva back to life, and he couldn’t force Tony to snap out of his funk. So he did the only thing he could do, and walked out.

 

* * *

 

In her usual fashion, Abby had been working on several projects at once. Her main focus, at the moment, was on the cargo manifests from several shipments to Somalia. On the screen next to her, the decryption software was working its way through Sara Roberts’ hard drive, giving Abby at least a few minutes to focus on the task at hand.

Between her and Tim, they had gathered all the information regarding Saleem Ulman and his operations that there was to gather. The CIA didn’t seem all that interested in finding him, so most of it seemed un-analyzed, though Abby hoped _someone_ had at least looked at it. The idea that the information had just sat on someone’s computer bothered Abby, but intelligence analysis wasn’t her job, at least not in that sense. But she finally thought she’d found the needle in the haystack that would pinpoint which of the various terrorist camps in North Africa was the one where Saleem Ulman was hiding.

The ding of the elevator behind her was hardly a surprise; Gibbs _always_ knew when she’d found something, after all, and if this wasn’t something, Abby would swear off caffeine forever.

Gibbs voice was short and clipped, even on the scale of Gibbs. “What have you got?”

Abby swiveled around in her chair and bounced across her lab to meet him by the work bench. “I figured it out, Gibbs!” she said excitedly.

“Figured out what, Abby?”

“How to find Saleem Ulman!”

He didn’t seem as pleased as she thought he’d be. He did not seem pleased at all, actually. “Are you working for the CIA now, Abby?”

Abby frowned. Gibbs knew why Abby had been looking into Ulman’s location. He’d been there when Tony had come down to her lab to ask for her help in finding him. It was the first thing Tony had showed any interest in since the beginning of the summer. “I was waiting for the files to finish being decrypted,” she replied, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice.

“Well, why is this taking so long?”

She turned back to her secondary computer just as it dinged. She brightened a little. “It’s done now. You can see what we found.” She opened the folder with the decrypted files and displayed it on the large plasma screen on the wall, knowing how much Gibbs hated squinting at her monitor. He walked around the workbench to see better.

“This one, right here,” he said. “She was looking to sell a house?”

Abby clicked on the e-mail he indicated, expanding the message. She scanned its contents quickly. “That’s what it looks like.” Even as she replied to his question, she started running a tracking program on the e-mail.

“Does she even _have_ a house listed in her name? And how could she afford a house worth millions on her salary, anyway?”

“Well, she _was_ an engineer, Gibbs. And maybe she inherited it?” Abby said, though even she didn’t believe that.

Gibbs turned around, glaring at her. “She was not selling a house,” he said flatly. “And whatever she was selling, that’s what got her killed.” He started moving, walking past her and to the door. “I want to know what that is.”

 

* * *

 

 _I got it,_ said Abby’s e-mail, splayed large over his screen. _But Gibbs has me working on the Roberts case. Don’t come until later._

Tony breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, hands clenching and unclenching. To hell with the Roberts case; it wasn’t interesting. Saleem Ulman was out there, too alive for comfort, and between him and a security-conscious freak who overdosed on cough medicine and fell down a ladder, Tony knew exactly where his priorities were.

He would’ve gotten up and gone down to Abby anyway except that Gibbs stormed into the squad room, and Tony needed to at least pretend any of this still mattered if he wanted Gibbs to back him on Saleem - and he _needed_ Gibbs against Vance.

He grit his teeth and shuffled some papers, trying to do something work-like. The words just kept shifting and flowing off the page, anyway.

“Boss!” Tim’s voice, too-loud as ever. “I think I got something!”

Even out of the corner of his eye, Tony registered the way Gibbs turned on him, sharp and focused and angry. “ _What,_ McGee?”

“I was looking at Sara Roberts’ e-mail accounts to see where they had been accessed from, and...”

“You got a point there, McGee?”

“Well, most people access their accounts from multiple locations...”

Tim’s voice, like the words on the page, washed out into static: _blah, blah, computer stuff, blah..._

“DiNozzo!”

“Yes, Boss,” Tony said. His eyes were still on the smears of ink on the page.

The only answer that came was Tim’s hand, brushing away the papers and stacking them. Tony forced himself to look up at him.

“Rose Bryant,” Tim said. “We’re picking her up.”

 _Okay,_ Tony almost said. _So?_ Except Tim was evidently waiting for him, so Tony pushed himself up.

Gibbs was glaring death at him, but Tony glared right back. On his screen, Abby’s words were still burning: _I got it._

 

* * *

 

He pulled the door to the interrogation room open with more force than was necessary and then pulled it shut again with just as much force, resulting in a particularly loud slam. The suspect jumped two whole inches in the chair. Gibbs’ disdain for the woman who was supposed to be a US Navy lieutenant increased another notch.

He pulled the other chair and sat down, dropping the file on the table but leaving it closed for the time being. Bryant’s entire focus was on him.

Good.

“You told Agent McGee,” he said, speaking very evenly, “that you and Sara were friends.”

“We were,” she replied. Her chin tilted up just a little: defiant.

“How long did you know each other?”

“Six or seven months. Look, Agent Gibbs, can you tell me why I’m here?” Bryant asked.

There were several ways to address her question, and Gibbs opted for the one that would make her the most nervous: he ignored it. “Was that her first time on a ship?”

She looked confused. “No. She’d been on _Laboon_ several times before then. You can’t install something like the railgun overnight, you know.”

He made a noncommittal sound. “How bad was her seasickness?”

“Seasickness?” The confusion appeared genuine, extending to her upper body and gesticulation and not merely limited to her voice. She was a better actress than he’d thought she’d prove to be.

“Yeah,” he said, and if she was intelligent enough to try and pull this off than she ought to be intelligent enough to hear the edge hiding in his voice. “Seasickness.”

“As far as I knew, she never had a problem with it,” she said. Her confusion was fast fading into exasperation. “I mean, who does, when a ship is tied up at the pier? But it’s not like I knew every detail of her life.”

There was the defensiveness, finally. But it wasn’t time to attack. Not yet. “Sara took Dramamine the day she died,” he said, leaning in with his elbows on the table. “Now why would she do that? You were her friend, lieutenant.” He leaned back. “You tell me.”

“Maybe her cold was making her dizzy. Do you know every single medication your friends are taking, sir?”

“Yes,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Especially if it’s going to affect how they function on the job. Your friend Sara, she ingested enough Dramamine to knock out a man one and a half times her size.”

The lieutenant’s eyes widened, but it was measured, lacking surprise. “Maybe she had a tolerance. Honestly, Agent Gibbs, I didn’t know she’d taken any Dramamine. She seemed fine to me.”

“I’m sure she did, lieutenant,” he said, his voice dropping several degrees without losing its evenness. “I’m sure she seemed just fine to _you._ You know what I think happened, lieutenant?” He leaned in more aggressively this time. “I think that you wanted your _friend_ out of the way so you poured cold medication and the Dramamine in her coffee. She was so out of it, with all these drugs in her system, that maybe you didn’t even need to push her off that ladder.”

She glared back at him. Interestingly, her anger seemed untempered with fear. “Are you accusing me of killing my friend?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You won’t find any evidence. You know why?” she demanded, leaning forward in her chair. “Because I didn’t kill her. She was my _friend_.”

“Well, I’ll give you that,” he said. “If you’re going to go around killing your friends, that’s a relatively painless way to do it. Speaking of which, your roommate, Lieutenant Devon? She was prescribed Tylenol with codeine this past winter. And she never throws out her leftover meds, which I’m sure, as her roommate, you know. Except she can’t find the remaining Tylenol.”

“Have you _seen_ the mess she calls her corner of our stateroom?” Bryant asked derisively.

“Yes, I have,” he said. “Smart choice, lifting Devon’s stash. Figuring out what Sara was up to, that was smart also. Or were you partners, right up until, what?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Agent Gibbs,” Bryant said, but her posture had shifted, her arms crossed defensively across her chest as she leaned back in the chair.

He considered her for a moment longer, and then leaned back, too. “Nah, you weren’t partners. She never saw you coming, did she?”

Bryant snorted, and the look on her face said she realized a moment too late that she shouldn’t have. Whatever she would come up with now would certainly prove to be interesting. “Sara wasn’t the most observant person in general, Agent Gibbs. I think you’d have figured that out by now, from her having over-dosed on three different cold medicines.”

His expression didn’t flicker at all as he commented, idly almost: “I never said it was three.”

 _Now_ she looked panicked, though she covered it up quickly. “You mentioned Dramamine and cold medicine in her coffee. I saw her take some pills before we were getting ready to leave the ship. That’s three.”

“Nice one,” he said, letting his voice express _not._ “But what would be even nicer is if you told me how you figured out what she was up to. We’ve already tied your computer back to her e-mail account, and there’s enough evidence to nail you for her murder, too. What was she selling?”

Bryant seemed to be considering things before she replied. “I want a deal.”

“I already have you for murder and selling classified information.”

She scoffed at him. “You don’t even know what she was trying to sell. For all you know, it was a vacation house she inherited.”

“There was never a house. Come on, Bryant. What was worth killing for?”

“Nothing that was on that flash drive,” she retorted. “At least, not directly.”

Wiping that smugness off her face was going to be fun. He raised his eyebrows at her. “So it was the blueprints of the railgun, rather than the prototype. Which makes our next question, who did you sell it _to?_ ” He put his palms on the table and stood up, leaning forward and looming over her. “Who is Gisele, Bryant?”

 

* * *

 

It hadn’t taken Gibbs long to find Kort. For all that the man was supposed to be one of the CIA’s top undercover operatives, he could be terribly predictable at times. That, and Gibbs knew Abby and McGee were exceptionally good at tracking people who didn’t necessarily want to be found. He waited for Kort to finish adding sugar to his coffee and to turn around before addressing him.

“Hello, Trent,” Gibbs said with forced casualness. He was tempted to just punch the man and save himself some time, but he needed information. Which meant having to play nice, at least for a little while.

“Gibbs,” Kort said with marked displeasure, looking not unlike he’d just swallowed a lemon rather than a sip of coffee. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Gisele,” he said.

“Excellent ballet,” Kort said. “You should go see it, sometime.”

Gibbs stepped forward into Kort’s personal space. “The weapons dealer. She damn well better be one of yours.”

Kort took another sip from his coffee. “I should’ve known you weren’t interested in ballet,” he commented. “No, she is not one of mine.”

“So the CIA dropped the ball on this one. Or should I say, _you_ dropped the ball on this one, Kort, as the Frog was _your_ op.” It was only by virtue of being in public that Gibbs kept his voice below an outright shout.

Kort visibly bristled. “I think we both know who it was who undermined that operation, Gibbs,” he all but hissed. “And she was not one of mine, either.”

“Yet one of _La Grenouille’s_ former associates has taken over his little black book, and now you’re telling me this Gisele character isn’t one of yours. So either you’re lying to me, or you fucked up big time. Now which one seems more likely?” Gibbs asked.

“Believe what you may, Gibbs, but I am not lying to you,” Kort said. He seemed to have calmed down. “Also, as you may recall, this has not been ‘my’ op in well over a year.”

The urge to punch the smug bastard rose again, and Gibbs clenched his hand into a fist at his side. Kort wasn’t necessarily lying, but he certainly wasn’t giving Gibbs the whole truth. “Tell me what you know,” he ordered.

“Even if I was involved in this operation, assuming it even is an operation,” Kort said, sounding a touch too self-satisfied, “I do not answer to you. Now, if you don’t mind, Gibbs, I have a desk to return to.”

Gibbs narrowed his eyes at the slimeball even as he took half a step back, implicitly releasing Kort. “You had damn well better not be lying to me again, Kort. Because this time, you’ll be dealing with me.”

 

* * *

 

She was sitting in the visitor’s chair in his office upon his return, legs stretched out in front of her and ankles crossed. Her position was only just too controlled to be called a _sprawl_ , but it was still relaxed and proprietary enough to set his teeth on edge.

“Didn’t I tell you not to do that?” Trent commented as he walked over to his desk, coffee still in hand.

“Break into your office?” she asked, toneless as ever.

“That too,” he acknowledged, sitting down. He could be another chair, for all that her eyes lingered on him. “I just had a visitor concerning your pet op, Dunski.”

Yael Dunski raised one shoulder in a highly stylized shrug. “Is that a problem?”

“I advised you to let sleeping terriers lie,” he reminded her. Yes, she was extremely good at her job, but she was not the only one.

She didn’t even blink. She had yet to move a muscle, other than that perfectly controlled shrug. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Why did you break into my office, by the way?”

“To find out if we have a problem.”

He hoped she did not expect him to believe that. He let the skepticism bleed into his voice as he said, “Well, you could’ve just called.”

This time she smiled, thinly and humorlessly. Her eyes remained flat. “You should take this as a compliment, Trent.”

“Thank you,” he said dryly.

“Anything of interest?”

That was more like it. “He’s convinced Gisele is someone’s asset.”

“Based on...?”

Kort tried and failed to suppress a grimace. “His famous gut.”

“Noted.” She pushed herself up.

He leaned back in his chair and commented, deliberately idle, “Not going to tell me to choose better handlers, next time?”

She deigned to look at him, but that was the extent of her expressiveness. “I didn’t think I need to, Kort,” she said, and then turned back to the door.

“I’d wish you a good day, Dunski,” he said after her, “but I don’t like you that much.”

She didn’t pause her step as she said, “This job is not about me,” but she did turn around. “It’s not about you, or him, or any one of us.” She stood in place a second longer, probably considering him; her eyes were on him, but that was all that her body betrayed. “Have a good day, Trent.”

He waited until he was absolutely sure she was gone, and only then he allowed himself to sigh.


	3. The Divide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this was crazy, then Tony would embrace it with both his arms. In which Tony goes missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** this chapter is rated M for captivity elements including stress positions, binding, sensory deprivation and some beating.

_Monday, September 07_

 

It was late, or it was early. Tony hadn't been paying attention, really. It got chilly, at some point when the night began to turn to morning, but he didn't notice. He'd been walking for hours. Abby would have words for him the next day, but Abby should follow Gibbs' example and leave him be.

Not that it mattered. He'd be in Somalia within a week, if the Gisele case didn't leech off too much of the team's attention and set him back even more. And once that show was on the road, then all this wouldn't matter.

Unless Tony could catch this phantom.

He was cutting through one of the narrow alleyways connecting the wider streets. The street at his back was still crawling with people, though the crowd seemed to be thinning out. Tony avoided the main streets, the bustling ones, the ones with the light. The phantom of Ziva was never there. It was always slightly off, slightly to the side, in the parallel streets that never got as much traffic, and somehow only ever in the periphery of Tony's vision, always gone by the time he turned his head.

It wasn't an illusion. The illusion was Ziva's voice in his ear on the job, it was the snatches of Kate's face he still saw, sometimes. Paula's laughter. Jeanne's ponytail. Tony lived with enough ghosts to tell the difference.

He obviously wasn't as good at finding people as he'd always boasted to be. He'd tried, and failed, and tried again, with no success. This was wandering into Abby's territory, or Tim's. But he couldn't tell them, because Ziva was dead, and Tony wasn't sleeping enough (according to Abby) or eating enough (according to Tim), and they would dismiss anything he said. Or worse: Tony had an appointment in the desert he had no intention of missing.

He hadn't even noticed he was adjusting his step until he already had. About fifty feet ahead of him, on the other side of the street, there was someone with a familiar stride who was wearing a dark ankle-length trench coat and her hair in a sharp ponytail, dark hair glistening with the products required to keep the curls flattened and in place.

He was behind her. She never saw him. Perhaps that was why she didn't immediately disappear.

His pulse sped up with every second that passed and he could still see her, every foot of distance less between them and she still looked like her.

Maybe he _was_ going crazy, but he'd embrace this crazy with both his arms.

They were at twenty feet apart when she turned into another alley and Tony could finally see the profile of her face. He stumbled on a broken piece of pavement and nearly fell and never noticed, because the profile was Ziva's profile. He just hurried forward, terrified that she would vanish once the line of sight was broken, like she did every time.

She was standing there when he turned into the alley, though: a slim woman with strong shoulders in a dark trench coat, her hair sleeked back and her hands in her pockets, or so he thought based on the angle of her shoulders and upper arms.

The alley was a dead end. She had nowhere to disappear to except thin air, and he was looking directly at her. With every step he took forward she was still there, still solid, still looking like Ziva.

Still with her back to him.

"Ziva." He said her name before he could even think to stop himself, said it like a prayer or a hope or maybe both.

She turned around and yes, her hands were in her pockets and yes, that was Ziva's face.

He stared, caught in his own surprise that she was _real_ this time. "Ziva," he said again, taking a step towards her, reaching out to touch her, to make sure that she really was there and this was not another mirage, another phantom that would disappear when he turned his head or when daylight broke.

The hard blow to his solar plexus proved that she _was_ real. He wheezed as he tried to get his breath back, and when he finally managed to straighten himself up again, she was still standing there. Her hands were at her sides, but Tony could see by her stance, the set of her shoulders and the way her weight was balanced, that she was ready for a fight. He rubbed absently at his chest, still not taking his eyes off of her.

He was awake, all of a sudden, for the first time in months. It was as if her hit had cleared the fog from his head. As if he had forgotten what it was to see, what it was to hear and taste, and now he was alive again, having found an oasis instead of another mirage. He drank her in, every detail of her appearance - from the hard look in her eyes and the not-quite frown on her lips down to the weight she had lost. She looked lean and sharp and dangerous, the way he remembered from her first days at NCIS.

"Ziva." _Third time's the charm_. He held his breath, waiting to see if the old saying would prove true this time. There was still the chance that she could vanish, leaving Tony behind with nothing but a bruise as evidence of her existence. But saying a name three times was meant to be a summoning, not a banishment. Still, he stepped forward again, wanting to pull her close and not let go.

She nodded once. He felt the grin split his cheeks, achingly wide. Relief washed through him a moment before a solid object collided with his back. He didn't have the chance to get his arms up to break the fall - tackle, really, because a knee was digging into his back as his arms were twisted behind him and his face pressed down against the asphalt, sharp rocks digging into his cheek. He strained his eyes to follow Ziva's body up the ankle-length coat she was wearing, but he couldn't see her face.

"Get him up," she said.

A second later, rope bit into his wrists, rough natural fiber that wouldn't slip easily. Then he was pulled up into a kneeling position. The one hand he could feel against the base of his neck seemed huge.

Ziva crouched in front of him. She was so close to him; close enough for Tony to tell that she still favored citrus in her shampoo, even if she'd switched brands, and to notice the absence of her favorite charcoal eyeshadow. She didn't look at him, not even as her hands slid into his pockets, pulling out his cell phone, keys, wallet, and knife.

He could see her pocketing the knife as she stood again. "Take these," she said. The weight of that hand disappeared from his neck for a second. "Get the car. I'll take him. Get his car, go to his place, leave his things there. Don't leave anything for them to find. Call me when you're done and I'll pick you up."

"Roger."

The pressure against his back lightened a little.

"Damon," said Ziva.

The man who was apparently named Damon stopped.

"Over there, please."

Tony grimaced as Damon lifted him up by the arms. He had no choice but to stand and stumble forward towards the wall of the alley, propelled by the shove against his lower back. The thought that perhaps he should be trying to escape didn't occur to him until after Damon used those giant hands of his to push down on Tony's shoulders, a foot connecting with the back of Tony's calf for good measure to get him back to his knees, just over two feet from that wall. Damon applied pressure to the back of his neck again, making Tony lean forward until he lost his balance and his forehead bumped hard against the brick wall. He wasn't getting up from this one, not without use of his hands. If the wall hadn't been there, he'd have been flat on his face on the ground already.

Far too late, Tony realized just how much trouble he was in.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs strode into Tony's apartment building with long, powerful steps, and Tim had to practically jog to keep up with his boss. He wasn't sure if Gibbs was presently more angry or worried, but he was fairly certain that the anger was what Tony would end up on the receiving end of. Tim winced sympathetically at the prospect. Then again, Tony hadn't shown up for work and hadn't answered his cell phone all morning. Gibbs might have been cutting Tony a lot of slack the last couple of months, but Tony had to know their boss was only so forgiving, even if Tony's semi-sanctioned op was probably what Gibbs wished he could be doing.

Tim was worried, more than anything. Tony hasn't been any good towards their regular work load in a while. Tim would have cared more about that, except that Tony hadn't been himself all summer. Abby and Tim had been taking turns keeping an eye on him, but it was still apparent that Tony was neither eating nor sleeping enough. It was bad enough before Abby had pinpointed Saleem, and Tony had only become more erratic since.

Gibbs banged on Tony's door before trying the handle, then he pulled out the spare key. If Tony _was_ inside, he'd have heard. And if he still wasn't answering... Tim didn't want to continue with that train of thought.

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs barked as they entered, but there was still no answer.

Tim had sort of expected to find Tony's apartment more of a mess than it was. There were empty paper cups scattered around the living room, and several empty coffee mugs. No pizza boxes, though, and no Chinese food cartons either. Everything indicated that Tony had been sleeping and eating less than even Tim and Abby had suspected.

Something else was faintly _off_. Making his way into the kitchen, instincts started kicking in, and Tim had pulled his gun without even thinking about it. He could hear Gibbs' footsteps heading towards Tony's bedroom. Tim scanned the room, eyes catching on Tony's wallet, keys and cell phone, sitting on the kitchen table. His stomach dropped, suddenly full of lead, and his heart was hammering. All Tony had been living for lately was Saleem's death, and it did not take Ducky to understand that Tony did not intend to outlive the terrorist by much. If Tony had decided not to wait -

Gibbs emerged back from the hallway, shaking his head. There was more worry than anger on his face.

"Tony's stuff is here, Boss," Tim said, pointing at the table. "I don't think that's where he usually leaves it, though."

"Yeah," Gibbs said. The tone of his voice made Tim's skin crawl even more: that shade of distracted exhaustion was reserved for flat-out disasters. "Get your kit."

The words took a moment to process, but Tim found he wasn't actually surprised; he'd already been thinking of Tony's apartment as a crime scene. Now it was just official.

He sighed. Abby was going to flip.

 

* * *

 

Ziva was driving. That much was sure, by the way Tony was being banged around in the back of the car. He would have said something, but it hadn't occurred to him to scream or bite until after Damon had taped his mouth shut, having dumped him in the back of the car - how long ago?

Tony had already lost track of time. There had been seven songs on the radio since Ziva had picked Damon up, and before that about a dozen while she had coffee - he could smell it, but couldn't see anything with the sack over his head - and they had to drive to get that coffee, too, and Tony had no idea how long that took or how long they had been waiting in that alley.

In retrospect, it didn't matter that he hadn't kicked when Damon had bound his legs. It wasn't like Tony stood a chance of evading Ziva, let alone that linebacker she had on a leash.

Ziva killed the engine at the beginning of song number nine. Tony heard one door slam and then another, but it was most definitely a while before somebody pulled the car's back doors open. Someone undid his shoelaces and pulled both his shoes and his socks off. Next came his belt, and then his jacket had been cut so it could be removed around his still-bound arms. Finally, the tape binding his feet had been cut and Tony was lifted and dumped on his feet.

And promptly nearly fell, because his legs were numb and would not hold him. Lucky him, though, whoever was handling him caught him in time.

They were indoors. The air was cool, but that was concrete under his feet - bare, uneven and unswept - and it smelled decidedly like a garage. There was no sound but breath, his and whoever was half-supporting him by the back of his shirt.

It was a very short walk before that person's identity was confirmed as Damon's when he said, "Watch the stairs," and that was all the warning Tony had before cement turned to patterned metal.

Tony counted twenty-four stairs before it was cement under his feet again. The air down there smelled different, like dust and gun oil, and every little noise echoed. Tony lost count of the number of steps before Damon shoved him to the right, and then let go.

The hands that grabbed his arms and moved him to the side were significantly smaller than Damon's and, when the sack was pulled from his head a second later, that was indeed Ziva standing before him. She'd lost her coat, and was wearing a thin green knitted sweater over dark pants. Her face, in the dim fluorescent light, was harsh and unforgiving.

"You are an idiot," she told him, her accent more pronounced than he'd heard since four years before. "And a fool. You should not have followed me."

_I had to_ , he tried to say, but the tape was still on his mouth, and it came out muffled and incoherent.

"When I'll want you to talk," she said, "you'll know. Otherwise, you would do well not to. Understand?"

He nodded his understanding, though there was so much he wished he could say to her.

"Turn around."

He turned, reluctantly, craning his neck to try and keep her in his line of sight.

She cut the rope on his hands with a single sweep of a knife he couldn't see. Then she stepped past him to the waiting Damon and closed the wire door of the cell behind her. He turned to watch her snap a padlock shut before the two of them left, leaving Tony alone.

It took him several moments before he thought to remove the tape from his mouth in one sharp tug, leaving the skin on his face burning. By then, Ziva was gone. Tony turned back towards his cell.

There wasn't much to see in the faint light coming from a fluorescent bulb somewhere down the hall. A bare mattress was on the ground along the right wall, and a plastic trash can was in the corner towards his left. That was the extent of the furnishings. No windows along the three bare concrete walls, and cold cement under his feet. He turned back around to look out past the wire mesh that made up the fourth wall, but there wasn't much to see beyond, either, except a small security camera mounted directly in front of the door. He tried to rattle the metal, but there wasn't any give, and there was nothing in the room that might allow him to try and pick the lock.

Alone in the near-dark, there wasn't much of anything for Tony to do, except sit and wait for Ziva to return.

 

* * *

 

_Tuesday, September 08_

 

Aside from the sounds of her machines, Abby's lab was quiet. Even Jimmy had finally stopped talking, after the fifth time she'd snapped at him for things she knew were relatively harmless comments. But she didn't want _cheering up_ , right now, and that's what Jimmy was trying to do. She'd have banished him from her lab, but she really didn't want to be alone, either.

What she _really_ wanted was to find Tony. What she wanted was not to have her lab table covered in Tony's belongings, sifting through them for trace evidence and possible fingerprints. What she wanted was for Tony to be there, grinning and teasing her in a way he hadn't done since the spring. What she wanted was for Ziva to be alive again so Tony wouldn't be so broken any more.

What she wanted was not to be crying, _again_.

At least this time, Jimmy didn't say anything. He just kept sifting through the plastic bags filled with Tony's belongings, cataloguing the content on a clipboard. Abby pushed back thoughts of Tony and Ziva as far as she could, taking a deep breath. The tears didn't last long; she didn't have many left to cry. Over a day had passed since receiving Tim's phone call that Tony was missing, and Gibbs was counting on Abby to find who took him. Crying wouldn't help.

The computer running the facial recognition software dinged, and Abby dropped the bag she was holding and ran over. Tim had plotted Tony's entire course the night he disappeared from his cell phone's GPS signal, and together they pulled the feed from every possible security camera. She already knew that Tony had entered an alley following a mystery woman and followed by an unknown man; that same man had left the alley minutes later, carrying Tony's cell and returned with a dark Ford Explorer. Abby had expanded the search, trying to find a clear shot of either of the kidnappers.

Finally, she had a hit.

The file that had appeared on her screen was one that she recognized, though she hadn't seen it in almost two years. But Damon Werth was one of the more memorable people that had crossed paths with her favorite NCIS team. She frowned, but it wasn't her job to figure out _why_ the former Marine had kidnapped Tony.

She found the connection. Now it was Gibbs' job to hunt him down.

 

* * *

 

_Wednesday, September 09_

 

The boredom was the worst part of it. That and the cold, but really, in a half-built concrete basement in early fall, he couldn't expect to be anything but cold. Especially with just his jeans and a t-shirt, and no blanket for the flimsy mattress.

At least the cold meant he stank less. He hoped.

But the boredom, that was the worst of it. It was driving him crazy. He wanted to talk to Ziva, needed to talk to Ziva, but Ziva had not been there since she had left him in the cell. He'd heard voices, sometimes, strange men too far away for him to see or to make out their words in the echoing semi-darkness, but the only person he actually saw was Damon, who came by to feed and water Tony and to empty out the trash bin that doubled as a toilet. Not that the notorious _Corporal Punishment_ had ever said a word.

Oh, yes, Tony remembered Damon Werth, eventually. He'd been a Marine, caught up in some super soldier experiment gone wrong. Gibbs had taken pity on him. That didn't happen often, especially since half the kid's problems had stemmed from steroid use. Steroid use that turned out to be self-inflicted, too.

Plus, Damon had broken his nose. _That_ was hard to forget. If Tony hadn't been so distracted by Ziva that night in the alley, it probably wouldn't have taken him so long to put the pieces together.

Ziva.

Ziva was alive, and that was a miracle in and of itself. She was supposed to be dead. Even Abby had said that Ziva was dead. Tony should have known better. He stared up at the ceiling, but he didn't see it. He saw Ziva, never stopped seeing her, and if he closed his eyes he could pretend that he knew exactly where she was, somewhere above him.

Echoing footsteps tore him from his thoughts, drawing close and loud enough that they had to be Damon doing his rounds. The sound was off, somehow, different. There was a second set of footsteps.

He sat up, wondering who would be coming down. He hoped it was Ziva, but if Damon had only been coming by once a day, then it had been five days since he'd seen her, and Ziva wasn't usually one for sudden, unnecessary routine changes. But it was also like Ziva to have sent Damon down on an irregular schedule, so Tony had no way of knowing for sure how much time had passed. There was enough stubble on his cheeks that at _least_ three days had passed, but he never usually went that long without shaving. With no routine, no change in the light or temperature, and no way to know for sure how long he slept, time had lost all meaning.

It _was_ Ziva. Tony pushed himself to his feet as the two approached the entrance to his cell. Their clothes - practical, for both of them - blended into the darkness around them, in shades of black and brown and olive drab. Only their skin stood out in pale relief, sickly white under the fluorescent lighting.

He considered, just for a moment, whether he could take them by surprise when they opened the door. Probably not. Between the past few months and several days of confinement, either of them would have him on the ground before he made it to the stairs. He'd be lucky if Ziva left the task to the big guy. Damon was bigger and stronger, but Ziva was the one he didn't want to cross. An escape attempt would no doubt put an end to the cozy hospitality Tony was presently enjoying, too.

Ziva already had the key in her hand when they stopped in front of him, but she didn't move to unlock the door. Instead she turned, giving Damon a questioning look. Damon shrugged. Ziva's look turned stern, but she didn't say a word as she undid the padlock and stepped in, leaning against the opposite wall from his mattress.

"I'd have expected you to babble yourself to death by now," she said. Her voice was flat, empty. "I'm surprised."

He had to swallow before he could make his voice work. "That makes two of us then, I guess. You're supposed to be dead."

She raised her eyebrows. "Am I."

"Your father... Abby..." He had to stop and swallow again. He wasn't sure he could keep looking at her, but he couldn't look away, either. He tried not to think about the look on Gibbs' face when he'd told them, but he was failing. Finally, he had to look away. "You were dead."

His voice sounded like hell, but well. It _had_ been hell.

"I am dead," she said.

His eyes snapped back to her.

"I am dead to you," she repeated, "and you are dead to me." She took half a step away from the wall. "I told you that I want nothing to do with you. Was I not clear?"

He tried to keep his expression neutral. He knew he wasn't succeeding, but the absurdity of what she was saying struck him a moment later, and he laughed. "Right, I'll just be going, then. Oh wait, never mind, you're the one keeping me here."

She crossed the six feet between them in two quick steps and backhanded him, hard, across his right cheek. His head twisted to the side from the force.

"Was I," she repeated, low and dangerous, "not clear?"

He reached up to touch his cheek, massaging it gently as he worked his jaw, eyes on her the entire time. "Well, you know me, never could follow directions."

"You will now," she said, enunciating very clearly, "or you will pay. Understood?"

Tony looked at her closely, trying to get a read on her. Could she really still be this mad at him that she would kidnap him and beat him up because of it? But that wasn't just anger in her expression. That was tension, and suddenly things started making sense. Tony's eyes darted, just for a moment, towards the security camera outside the cell. Ziva's eyes didn't follow, but Tony trusted her to know that he had gotten the message.

"Understood," he replied. He wouldn't make this any harder on her than it had to be.

She stepped back from him. "Down," she said shortly, indicating the mattress.

He sat on the edge, knees bent in front of him, looking up at her. She stepped back, putting about four feet between them.

"You were following me," she said.

"I've been following you for weeks." He was going to add _This time you just happened to be real,_ but she cut him off.

"Why were you following me?"

"I had to."

"Explain."

"You were dead," he told her again. Those three words should have explained everything to her, but apparently she didn't get it. "I saw you, and I..."

Her voice turned sharp. Sharper. "And you, what?"

It was a good question, one he'd been asking himself since the first time he'd thought he'd seen her. He'd never actually figured out what he'd do if the phantoms had been real, hadn't actually ever believed they would be. "I don't know."

She snorted. "What _do_ you know?"

_That I missed you so much it nearly killed me_. He couldn't say that out loud, though. "McGee and Abby will be glad to know you're alive."

Her expression twisted, became darker. Her hand twitched by her side. "I told you," she said. Her voice was all wrong. "But you were always a little slow. So let's make sure that this time you at least hear me, yes?" She came over and stood directly above him, and he felt a momentary flash of fear.

"I am dead to you," she said, "and you are dead to me. Say it."

He stared up at her in disbelief. Even if she held a gun to his head right now, he wasn't sure he could say those words. He couldn't even repeat them within his own head. Not after he'd just got her back.

"You are dead to me," she repeated, and then the order too: "Say it!"

That part wasn't so hard. "I am dead to you," he said. He nearly winced at the sound of his voice: soft and resigned and helpless, it sounded nothing like him at all. He dropped his gaze, staring at the cement instead. He'd had months to get used to that idea, with all the e-mails she had sent to Tim and Abby and Ducky and not to him.

Never to him.

"Look at me."

He stole a few seconds, trying to put his face back into a blank mask before looking up at her again. It was pointless, and not just because he was failing miserably and knew it. She'd always been able to see right through him. He had no idea why he was even bothering to try.

_You're an idiot,_ her voice snapped in his head.

He met her eyes.

"Again," she said. "Look at me, and say it."

He kept her gaze this time, and this time his words sounded wooden and hollow and about as dead as he felt. "I am dead to you."

"Better." She stepped back against the opposite wall. "Why did you keep following me?"

"I had to know if it was you." The truth kept making her angry, but the truth was all he had. "Do you want me to make up a lie for you?"

"Why did you need to know?"

Anger and bitterness and utter exhaustion got the better of him. "I was hosting a Ziva look-alike contest and needed one more contestant," he snapped.

Her smile was thin, lopsided and devoid of humor. "You realize I should slap you again, yes?"

"Then what's stopping you?" he challenged.

She came over to stand above him again, her hands behind her back as she considered him.

He tilted his chin up, turning his left cheek towards her.

"How very Christian of you," she said icily. He was expecting the slap, but he wasn't prepared for her right hand to descend as fast and hard as it did, the palm connecting with his cheek. The blow knocked him back onto the mattress, vision shorting out for a split second. By the time he turned to look back at her, the lock was already clicking shut.

She didn't look back.


	4. Desert Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “People do not need a reason to lie; they need a reason to tell the truth. And I’m going to give you one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings: this chapter rated M** for captivity elements including forced drug use, dehumanization and some beating; and intense emotional content including suicidal leanings.

_Thursday, September 10_

 

0700 was not all that early, and would have felt a lot later if Cassie had managed to get to sleep before very nearly early morning, the night before. But when she'd received the phone call from Director Vance telling her she was transferring to the Major Crimes unit effective first thing the next day, Cassie had decided that making the three and a half hour drive that night was the lesser evil, compared to the option of daring rush hour the next day.

That was all Director Vance had told her on the phone. Cassie knew enough about Team Gibbs in general to work out the rest of the math. She was one of very few agents whose competence Gibbs would acknowledge and who could take the man's attitude, and she and Tim McGee were comfortable with one another. She didn't want to transfer from Norfolk but if Team Gibbs needed a hand then she was the first choice and, anyway, the only possible answer when the Director barked at one to jump was "How high?"

Gibbs and McGee were the only members of the team present when she stepped in, and the desk that used to be David's was still empty, four months after. Cassie frowned a little as she took in the scene, dropping her bag at the empty desk. No Tony; a very tense Gibbs; and a Tim who, by the crumpled look of him, had slept in the office and was not even trying to hide it, suggesting that this was a regular occurrence.

Cassie had a sneaking suspicion that her five hours of sleep put her well ahead of both the other agents.

They still hadn't noticed that she was there. They were standing in front of the plasma, staring at the photo splashed across it. Cassie came closer for a better look. Black-and-white and slightly fuzzy, it had definitely been pulled from a security camera. It was grainy enough and distant enough that facial recognition was probably impossible, Abby Magic or not. It was a photo of two people standing in a street, a man and a woman.

"Who's the guy with Ziva?" she asked. Tim dropped the plasma's remote as he spun to look at her. The bags under his red eyes suggested that this - whatever ‘this' was - had been going on for a while. He'd lost a noticeable amount of weight, too, and the way the suit hung on him suggested that some of it was recent.

"Cassie!" he said. "What are you doing here? I mean," he continued immediately, stuttering on the words, "I knew you were coming, but I didn't think you'd be here until later."

Gibbs, meanwhile, hadn't turned. The set of his shoulders shifted, becoming disturbingly intense.

Cassie kept one eye on him as she replied to Tim. "I decided to make the drive last night," she told him. "Director Vance made it sound like something big was going on, but he didn't say what."

Tim shifted uncomfortably and glanced at Gibbs, but Gibbs was still glaring holes through the plasma.

"Tony was kidnapped on Monday by an arms dealer named Gisele," Tim said.

 _Kidnapped._ And it was Thursday already. This definitely explained the situation she'd walked into as well as why she had been called into it.

"We _think_ that's her on the screen," Tim continued, picking up the remote and gesturing at the plasma. "The guy is Damon Werth, Marine Corps, dishonorable discharge. Abby got his image off a camera from when Tony was taken. We traced his employment record since his discharge, going from one shady job to a shadier one, until a trafficker we have connected with Gisele. From there he went completely off-grid, until this."

Gibbs turned abruptly. Cassie opened her mouth to say hello but Gibbs brushed right past them, attention wholly elsewhere.

"Boss?" Tim called out, but Gibbs - bounding up the stairs to the director's office two at a time - didn't answer.

Tim gave Cassie an apologetic shrug. She smiled in return, trying for reassurance.

"All right," she said, "bring me up to speed."

 

* * *

 

There were footsteps approaching, and they weren't Damon's. Tony paused in his trying to make the piece of bread bounce off the cement. That was new. He'd heard the other people, but he hadn't actually _seen_ any of them.

He got up and approached the wire, trying to peer into the wide, dark hallway. At first he had no more success this time than any of the other hundreds of times he'd done the same, but then he could see them: two men, both of them buff, both of them in the variations on the theme of boringly dark clothes, and both most certainly carrying.

Carrying what looked like a grocery plastic bag, but he couldn't see what was inside.

At about ten feet, one of them called out "Zhere it is!"

Of course. They were probably there for one of the crates. He leaned against the wire mesh to watch them.

"You're right," said the other one. "Look at the state of it; you'd think she'd take better care of her toys."

"She's taking plenty good ker of zhe azer one," the first one remarked. He had a noticeable Russian accent, and his name was probably Ivan or Vlad or something equally as stereotypical. But he was also big and ugly with tattoos that Tony couldn't make out in the gloom, even though Ugly and his friend Dumb were now standing in front of Tony's cell.

"No, really," Dumb said. "I didn't notice."

"Can I help you?" Tony asked them. "Perhaps you'd like a drink? Wine?"

"Oh look," said Ugly. "It can tok. Did you know it could tok, Zhack?"

"No, Zhenya," Dumb replied. His serious tone showed that he certainly deserved the nickname Tony had given him. "Think she's keeping it for its wits?"

"Niet," said Ugly. "Doesn't look like she's keeping it for its looks, sough, eizher." Oh, because _he_ was one to talk. At least Tony didn't look like he'd run headlong into a brick wall. At least not last time he'd checked, anyway.

"You into guys now?"

Ugly slapped Dumb upside the head. Or tried to: Dumb intercepted it and forced his forearm back. They struggled for a few seconds, and then Dumb let Ugly go. Pity; it had been entertaining to watch.

"Yobtfuyomat," Ugly muttered. Tony wished he knew more than a bare handful of phrases in Russian, but he doubted _that_ one would be in any official dictionaries.

"Leave my mother out of it," Dumb told him.

"Really, sough," said Ugly, gazing at Tony. "Vat's she doing, trading a Ferrari for a Kia?"

"Hey!" Tony protested. "I'm at _least_ a Lexus, thank you very much. Maybe a nice new Camaro."

"Nah, you're looking at it wrong," Dumb said. "A woman like our boss, she's not trading one fuck toy for another. She's collecting."

Clearly they didn't know Ziva all that well.

" _Tak,_ collecting," Ugly agreed. "Well, can't argue widh zat logic."

"You can," Dumb said, "but then she'll be _collecting_ your balls on a silver platter."

Tony snorted. Okay, so maybe they _did_ know Ziva. Tony considered telling them off for talking about Ziva like that, but this was the funniest thing that had happened to him in... well, months, probably. He wished he had a bowl of popcorn to watch these two go at it. Everything about this felt like something straight out of the kind of cheesy movie he loved to watch.

Dumb squinted at Tony. "You're right, though. It's really scrawny, under all that dirt."

"Vell, maybe we should feed Boss's pet," said Ugly. "Vat do you say, Polly?" he called at Tony. "Vant a cracker?"

He raised an eyebrow at them. "Do I _look_ like a parrot?" But his mouth was watering at the thought of a cracker, and he eyed the bag that Dumb was carrying.

"Niet," Ugly said. "More like -" he turned to Dumb. "Vat do you call dem? Ass-faced monkeys?"

"Baboon, you retard," Dumb said.

Ugly turned back to Tony. "You look like a baboon," he declared.

Tony made a show of looking behind him, then looked back at Ugly. "Me? You talkin' to me?" he asked in his best De Niro. He looked behind him again, then back at Ugly. "Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?"

He was met with blank looks. Obviously neither of them had ever seen _Taxi Driver_. Classic film, probably one of De Niro's best.

Dumb reached into the bag and full out a palm full of unshelled peanuts. "Would you like to do the honours?" he said.

"Vy, spasiba," Ugly replied. He took the peanuts from Dumb's palm. "Here, Polly," he said, and threw a peanut at Tony, hitting him right over his bruised cheek. Well, one of his bruised cheeks.

Meanwhile, Dumb had pulled out more peanuts. Tony flinched back from the wire, throwing his hands up in front of his face for protection.

Their laughter echoed down the corridor as peanuts continued to pelt Tony. The damn things _hurt_ , a hell of a lot more than he would have expected them to. He retreated as far as he could into the room, and while that meant their aim was slightly worse, there wasn't enough space to actually make a difference. Dumb and Ugly just kept laughing, which meant they probably weren't going to stop any time soon - at least not until the bag of peanuts was gone, and that was a big bag of peanuts.

The thought occurred to him briefly as he yanked the mattress up from the floor to take cover that, once they did finally leave, he'd have all those peanuts to eat. He paused and considered. If he hid behind the mattress, that would take away their sport, and then they'd stop throwing them into his cell.

"Hey!" Damon's voice ricocheted through the space like the bang in a flash-bang. His steps weren't any quieter.

"Hey, Whiplash!" Dumb called out. "Come to join the fun?"

The next moment, Damon was in Tony's field of vision, and then both Ugly and Dumb were on the floor, peanuts spilled all over, and Damon standing over them like a very irritated wolf.

Damon kicked Dumb in the stomach. "Your idea, Jack?" he snarled. "Or was it yours, Zhenya?" Ugly got kicked in the back. "Doesn't matter," Damon continued. "Gisele's going to flay both your balls for it." He gave Tony a narrow-eyed stare as he pushed his mattress back into place and stood up. "She might blunt one of her knives especially for it, too."

Ugly muttered another word that ended with _mat._

"What was that?" Damon demanded. He picked Ugly up and slammed him against the wire. Tony picked up a couple of peanuts and cracked the shells open. Not popcorn, sure, but better than nothing.

"You wanna say that to my face?" Damon continued, before letting go of Ugly, demonstratively turning his back on him and picking up Dumb up with one hand, dumping him on his feet. "Upstairs," Damon said shortly. " _Now._ "

And then they were gone, scampering down the corridor like frightened rabbits, leaving Tony alone with Damon and his pile of peanuts.

Damon turned and faced Tony again once the footsteps died away. Tony should be worried, really, with the anger rolling off of the big guy, but it was a distracted sort of anger, none of which seemed to be focused on Tony specifically.

Refreshing, really, to not be blamed for other people's fuck ups. Tony held a hand out towards Damon and flashed his teeth brightly. "Peanut?"

Damon stared at Tony, and then a tiny bit of the anger drained out of him. "You really are fucked in the head, you know that?"

Tony's grin was more real, this time, as he popped the peanut into his mouth. "That's what they keep telling me."

Damon's anger faded further, becoming something more like irritation. He gave Tony's pile of peanuts a long look. "Those had better be shells by morning," he said, and then, without waiting for a reply, turned and left.

It was a few more moments and many peanuts later before what Damon had said caught up with Tony.

_Gisele would flay your balls for it._

Gisele.

Ziva.

 

* * *

 

Her cell phone buzzed softly, vibrating against the table. Yael glanced at it. All the display told her was that it was an international call. Not that there were too many options, this being her work line and all non-urgent communication going through e-mail.

She picked up on the second ring. "Dunski."

"Yael."

Even if she hadn't identified Ziva's father's voice, only one person ever called her by her first name on the job who was not one of her cousins or otherwise shared her last name. That tone of his voice was bad news, though. There was an edge in the pleasantness.

"Eli," she acknowledged.

"I was wondering if you could perhaps decipher something for me."

If Eli was playing games, then he was genuinely displeased. That was enough for her to know what the conversation was about. "What is it?"

"Why would NCIS be asking whether my daughter is alive, seven weeks after we had told them that she is dead?"

"Because," she answered levelly, "DiNozzo stumbled into her lap."

That gave Eli a pause. "He did?" he asked after a second. "How?"

"Stubbornness and luck," she replied. The latter was a given; the former was deduction.

Eli didn't say _huh_ or _well_ , but that pause was over a second long. "Is it being handled?" he asked.

She aborted the _Of course_ that would have alerted him to her mood, and said instead, "Yes."

"Don't underestimate him, Yael," Eli said, his tone underscoring the warning in his words.

And because she had always played it slightly arrogant with him, she said: "I saw the tape, Eli."

Eli chuckled. "Ah, Yael," he said. It was almost affectionate. Then his voice turned stern. "But I should not have heard of this from NCIS."

"It's being handled, Eli," she said, injecting a slight measure of boredom into her voice.

"Still, Yael. I understand you are used to a different protocol, but you are working with us now, yes?"

She knew that voice, too, he used it often with Ziva. The correct reply to it was affection, touched with exasperation. "All right, Eli. I'll report more often."

"Good morning, Yael."

That was deliberately sarcastic tacked at the end of a conversation, so Yael did not correct him to _Afternoon, really,_ but rather simply replied, "Sleep well, Eli," and hung up, putting the phone down without looking at it or her laptop.

 _It's being handled,_ she'd told Eli. It was.

Just not by her.

In the relative privacy of the CIA office, Yael placed her elbows on the desk and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the heel of her palms for just a second, reminding herself what the gesture of exasperation and exhaustion felt like. She slid her palms down to her eyes, brushed out with the balls of her hands towards her temples, rubbed a few circles against them and straightened her back again.

The question wasn't whether she was handling it. That was her duty. The only question was how well.

 

* * *

 

_Friday, September 11_

 

Tony didn't hear the footsteps at first over the sound of his own coughing. He wasn't sure when the cough had started, but it had been long enough that his chest muscles were sore and his throat was raw. He probably wouldn't have felt so miserable if he'd been able to soothe the cough, somehow, but he only got one cup of water at a time, and that was long gone. The peanuts had tasted good, but certainly hadn't helped with the cough.

He'd thought, at first, that it was just Damon, but then he heard the second set of footsteps, lighter and softer. That meant Ziva.

Tony pushed himself up off the floor, but had to lean heavily against the wall when the world swam around him and grey spots appeared at the corners of his vision. Not exactly a new development, there, but he was trying not to think about what it meant, in the long run. He knew it was only a matter of time until his body decided the amount of food and water he was getting just wasn't enough, but he couldn't remember the numbers quoted at him during long-forgotten training seminars.

Didn't really matter. He wouldn't be here that long. Ziva would get him out of here, or Gibbs would find him. The odds were even on which would come first.

Ziva and Damon stopped in front of his cell. There was an amusing amount of symmetry in what they were wearing, though Damon's color scheme was mostly limited to black, while Ziva's ventured into charcoal. Ziva also had a parcel in her hands, something wrapped up in dark cloth.

They paused by the wire.

"Down," Ziva said.

Tony let himself slide down the wall, knees bent loosely in front of him, hands resting on top of them.

She opened the lock deftly with one hand and stepped in, standing by the opposite wall from him. Damon stepped in after her, but remained close to the wire.

That was different.

"The problem," she said quietly, but clearly, "is that you are a very good liar."

"Why would I lie to you?" he asked. _To save your worthless ass,_ her voice snapped in his head, memories of Israeli sun brighter and clearer than this cell.

Ziva changed the script, though. "Why wouldn't you?" She countered. "A better question would be what reason do you have to be truthful with me. Honestly, Tony? I see none." She pushed herself from the wall. "We are not allies," she continued, looking at him but seemingly talking to herself, "and even when we were, you still did what _you_ thought was best. Made your own decisions, regardless of what I said. Investigated whatever you thought was your right to investigate. You lie, Tony, and you mislead, with every breath and every joke. I have no reason to trust you."

If she was trying to find out what NCIS knew about Gisele, she was out of luck. He'd been too busy investigating Saleem Ulman to care about Gisele. It was a mistake, in retrospect, but that was hardly surprising. Somehow, he doubted she would find that thought amusing, though. Not in her current mood. "What _reason_ do I have to lie to you, Ziva?"

"People do not need a reason to lie," she said. "They need a reason to tell the truth. And I'm going to give you one. Damon."

Damon moved further into the cell and approached Tony. He look vaguely apologetic, like he always did whenever he brought Tony his food. But that didn't stop him from grabbing the front of Tony's shirt to pull him away from the wall and push him down flat on his back. Damon was on top of him, rather suddenly, straddling his waist and pinning Tony's hands above his head.

He saw Ziva approach from the corner of his eye, and turned his head to see her better. It took Tony a moment to register what it was that she was carrying, and then he was struggling under Damon's weight to no avail. She knelt next to him, her fingers cool against the skin inside his elbow as she pulled it taut, then the needle pierced the skin with a flash of pain. It burned, just a little, as she pushed in the plunger and the clear liquid vanished inside him.

"Shh," she said, brushing the hair away from his forehead. "This will only take a few seconds."

She was right. Whatever had been inside that syringe was already kicking in. His pulse was in his ears, loud as a drum, the drum being his heart, pounding in his chest like the bass at a loud pub. He almost didn't recognize the warmth that coursed through him, sudden like a shot of liquor. It'd been too long since he'd last been warm. His chest didn't hurt. His face didn't hurt. Nothing hurt.

The grin pulled at his cheeks.

This? This was nice.

"There," Ziva said quietly. Her hand was gone from his face. "That's better. You can leave, Damon."

"Ziva?" Tony heard him ask from a thousand miles away. His voice sounded weird, and not just because of the distortion. Tony would've almost thought _hesitant,_ but hesitation was not in Damon's job description.

Not that Tony cared, particularly; not when he felt this light and warm, and Ziva was there.

"You should leave, Damon."

A moment later, Damon's weight was gone. "Light enough to fly away," Tony told Ziva, who was still there, hovering over him like an angel. He reached up to try and touch her cheek.

She moved his hand away. "No," she said. "Stay still."

He nodded, but then he was flying. "Not supposed to move," he tried to protest. It did the trick, because he settled back down to Earth, with Ziva sitting next to him while he laid on his side. He grinned at her again. "Hi."

"Do you remember the first time we met?" Her question washed over him, low and smooth.

An image of Kate in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform floated into his mind. "I was daydreaming about Kate being naked," he replied. "And then you walked in."

"What happened then?"

"You sat down at Kate's desk. Didn't get up again til last May. You'd probably look better in that short skirt than she did," he said. The mental image was a nice one, so he smiled.

"Answer what I ask you," she said. "Nothing more. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Good." The word felt like a caress. "Do you remember the night we met in the alley?"

He had to think for a moment about which alley she meant. Probably the last one, though. "Yes."

"Good. What were you doing on the streets that night?"

"Walking."

"Why were you walking?"

"Couldn't sleep."

"Anything more?"

"Needed air."

"What were you thinking about, while you were walking that night?"

"You. Somalia. Death." He could feel the cool fall air on his face, hear the sounds of other people moving in and out of bars and restaurants. He remembered seeing a woman who looked like Ziva, but not really having any hope that it was actually her. He reached out again to try and grab on to her, but the phantom slipped through his fingers.

Cool fingers touched his forehead again, brushing against his skin for just a moment before disappearing a moment later.

Just another phantom.

"What were you thinking about me, that night?"

"You were dead. Maybe you were lucky. Luckier than me, but I'd be joining you soon, and getting revenge. We found him, you know?" he asked her. "Well, Abby and Tim. I wasn't much use. Thinking about that, too. You knew how useless I was."

"Who did Tim and Abby find?" Her voice was still as smooth as butter, melting into him.

"The man who killed you. Saleem Ulman." Ziva was frowning at him. He hated when she frowned. "Don't worry, we'll get your revenge."

"Forget about Saleem," she said. "What do you know about Gisele?"

"Arms dealer. Thought it was Jeanne, but she's in California. Still. Wasn't really working on that case though," Tony said. Jeanne was wearing the schoolgirl outfit, now, standing behind Ziva with that coy smile of hers. He smiled back at her and tried to wave.

Oh, right, he wasn't supposed to move. That was why he couldn't lift his hand.

"Tell me everything you know about Gisele."

"Took over for _La Grenoiulle_. Buying information from some lieutenant. Told you," he said, "wasn't working that case."

She sighed a little, like a wisp of wind. He could see the air moving away from her lips. "The night we met in the alley," she said, "did you follow me? Yes or no."

"Yes."

"Was it the first time you attempted to follow me?"

"No." He'd lost track of how many times. None of them had ever been her, though. Not when she was crushed under miles of water off the coast of Africa.

"Why," she asked again, openly exasperated, "were you following me?"

"Because you were dead. Because I couldn't live without you. Because..." The bright Israeli sun burned into his eyes and he had to blink away the tears it brought. It was framing Ziva like a halo, and he reached forward to touch her again, and this time it worked.

She swatted his hand away. His hand fell and bounced off the ground. He watched it where it lay limply. There was no pain.

"Couldn't live without me, could you?" There was something in Ziva's voice, and Tony tried to figure out what it was, but the word wouldn't come to him. He recognized it, though, had heard it plenty of times from Ziva, and Gibbs, and Vance, and so many others.

 _Anger_.

That was the one. She was angry at him. Had every right to be.

"Sorry," he replied. "Took longer than I thought."

" _What_ took longer than you thought?" He'd never really understood that metaphor about a person's words being like a whip, but now he did, the hard leather sharp across his cheek.

"Was supposed to be going to Somalia in a week. Couldn't find..." Couldn't find who? A name danced just at the edge of his mind. "Someone."

The world spun around him, blacking out, and when it cleared he found himself with his back pressed against something hard and cold and Ziva's face mere inches from his own.

"What right," she said through gritted teeth, "do you have to miss me so much? What claim do you think you have on me?"

"I don't have a claim," he replied. "But that hasn't made it any easier."

"You killed," she snarled. "You killed..." The world shifted again as she pulled him forward and pushed him back again. Stars flashed in his eyes and his vision blurred more, but he wasn't sure why. "Why did you kill him? Why did you kill Michael?"

Pain throbbed in his arm and the gun was heavy in his hand. Light flashed off the shard of glass, already coated in blood, long enough to be used as a knife. "Told him to stay back," he said. His own words echoed loudly in his ears, but not as loudly as the gunshots when Michael didn't stop his approach. "He was going to kill me."

"Who started the fight?" she demanded.

"Michael."

"Michael," she said flatly. "Did M- Who attacked who first?"

Michael was standing behind Ziva with a glass of liquor and a smirk on his face. Tony's handcuffs rattled when he held them out. "He kicked my hand away."

Ziva's face fell away, and he saw more than felt the boot connect with his stomach. It stole his breath, and he couldn't suck in more air. He was choking, drowning in his own lungs, and Ziva was awash in pale blue light in front of him.

"You killed him," she said. Her voice was ragged. "You _killed_ him." She dropped him onto the mattress, hanging her head. "Why did you have to kill him?"

"He tried to kill me," he replied, once the stars cleared from his eyes again. He tried to make them focus on Ziva, crouching next to him, next to Michael's body, but everything kept twisting and flickering. "He wouldn't stop."

She wasn't moving, but she was making soft noises. Tony willed his body to roll towards her. It didn't quite work. He couldn't do even this right. Slowly, though, in fits and bursts, his body complied. It took a monumental amount of effort and an indiscernible length of time to move his body less than a foot, but, eventually, he was able to reach out and rest his hand on her knee. "I'll be dead soon enough, so you'll have your revenge," he offered. It was the only comfort he had to give her, the only way to make any of this right.

"You idiot," she whispered hoarsely. Her fingers nestled in his hair. "I have cried only once since Tali, before today."

He didn't know what to say to that. It didn't seem to matter so much, commanding less of his attention than her fingers did, pulling gently at his hair, the rough cuticles rubbing against his scalp, their chill pleasant against his feverish skin. It was better than thinking about Michael, and Ziva loving Michael, mourning Michael, wishing that it had been Tony instead.

Eventually her sobbing stopped. She pushed him off her, and rearranged his body on the mattress, sliding her hand down from his cheek when she was done.

"Sleep," she whispered.

He slept.


	5. Reflections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Gibbs isn’t quite sure what to make of Officer Yael Dunski.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating & Warnings:** aftermath of the previous chapter; otherwise, canon-typical content.

Gibbs scrubbed at his face, trying to push the exhaustion aside to focus on the file in front of him. A picture of Ziva was staring up at him, taken from a security camera earlier that week, Damon Werth at her side. It was the picture that Cassie had seen, the last piece of the puzzle for figuring out who Gisele was, the woman responsible for kidnapping Tony.

He flipped the page. It was the fifth day of Tony being missing. Gibbs was steadfastly trying not to run through every possible scenario in his head for what could have happened, for why Ziva hadn’t found some way to contact him yet, for why she hadn’t found some way to get Tony out. He didn’t want to consider the option of her cover having been blown, but the thought of what she might have done to protect it was far from pleasant. He was equally not thinking of why every contact he and his team had called up had turned up nothing.

He stood abruptly, startling McGee. He needed coffee. Needed to not be sitting here at his desk while two of his team were out there somewhere without backup. Because whatever half-assed plan the CIA had cobbled together with Mossad, they obviously hadn’t been giving Ziva the support she needed here in DC.

He nearly ran into a woman as he came around the corner from the bullpen towards the elevators. Probably in her early thirties, of medium height, in standard business attire with a brown ponytail, she could almost be just another agent. Something about her was off, though: a touch too shrewd, a little too wary. He’d never seen her before, and there was a visitor’s badge clipped to the bottom of her shirt.

Definitely not there for a social call, with eyes like that.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Agent Gibbs.” Her tone was professional, crisp and calm, with the barest hint of a foreign accent that wasn’t immediately placeable. He raised an eyebrow at her.

“And you are?”

She cocked her head minutely to the side. “Are you Agent Gibbs?”

“Yeah, I’m Agent Gibbs. Can I do something for you?” Normally, he might have been sarcastic with the woman, but right now he was running on too little sleep and not enough caffeine.

Something relaxed in her, minutely, as she said “I was hoping we could help each other,” and offered her hand. “Officer Yael Dunski, Shin-Beit.”

 _Ah_. Israeli. She could only be here for one reason, even if Gibbs didn’t know how Israel’s _domestic_ security agency played into this mess. He took her hand, though, then gestured her back into the bullpen. He sat on the front corner of his desk. “You’re here about Ziva.”

He saw Tim’s head snap up from the computer screen at Ziva’s name. “Boss?”

Gibbs ignored him, waiting for the woman’s reply.

She blinked once. “So you figured it out, too.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, crossing his arms across his chest. She didn’t seem nearly as surprised as she should be, but that was a thought to file away for a later time. Her lack of reaction probably just meant she knew more than she was planning on letting on. “What do you know about the current situation, Officer Dunski?”

“That Mossad, being Mossad, are playing dangerous games and not bothering to bring anyone into the loop,” she said. Her tone was faintly disgusted, with a hint of something that could have been scathing. Her eyes scanned the squad room. “Is here all right?”

“Where else would you expect us to go?” He posed the question as a challenge, wondering if she would try and keep McGee out of the loop on this one.

Her eyebrows twitched, not quite rising. “These are your security protocols,” she said. It sounded like _It’s your funeral._ But there probably wasn’t much she could say that hadn’t already been tossed around by McGee and Cassie over the last few days.

“Agent McGee is part of this investigation. Anything you can tell me, you can tell him, too,” Gibbs said, gesturing towards McGee.

Dunski half-turned towards McGee, nodding at him. “Officer Dunski, Shin-Beit,” she said by way of a greeting, and then turned back to Gibbs. “The Shin-Beit tracks terrorists,” she began. “I am part of the Jewish Department, tasked with preventing attacks from Israeli Jewish perpetrators on Arabs, whether Israeli or Palestinian. A group I’ve been tracking entered negotiations with a weapons dealer known as Gisele. Gisele has supposedly been in the trade for years, but,” the corner of her mouth stretched in something too sharp to be called a smile, “I know a legend when I see one. Officially I am here because both you and I have been tracking her, and because she is based here. Unofficially?” Grim determination leaked into her voice, posture, face. It wasn’t much, but the half a minute he knew her was long enough to know that this one had been trained to show nothing. Coming from her, this was as close to total openness as it came. “I am here because I can’t think of anyone else who might give a damn about Ziva. I hope I’m not wrong.”

“And if you are?” He was curious to see what her reaction to that would be. Whether she was really here in Ziva’s best interest or because Ziva’s father had sent her to recover an “asset” would remain to be seen. As a general rule of thumb, Gibbs didn’t tend to trust people he didn’t know, and Israelis had a bad track record with him. To top that, she was an Israeli _spook._ Gibbs made a point of never trusting spooks.

There was steel under her calm. “Then I’ll be walking right back out.”

“Do you know Ziva?” McGee asked.

Her eyes didn’t leave Gibbs’ face. “Should I leave?” she asked, the steel more obvious.

“Answer Agent McGee’s question and we’ll see.”

This time, her smile almost looked like one. “I’ll take that as a no,” she said. She turned to McGee, posture a tiny bit more relaxed than it had been a second before. “Only since always,” she told him. “We grew up two houses down from each other. Been in the same class from preschool to high school.”

Her response should have been reassuring, but Vance’s words about why Ziva had killed her brother came back to him. Gibbs couldn’t give this woman the benefit of the doubt. But he _could_ use her to try and find Ziva, and by extension, Tony.

“You know where to find her?” he asked. Even if she did, he wasn’t expecting her to tell him, but he’d give her the rope to hang herself with early and see what happened.

“Would I be here if I did?”

“You tell me.” He moved around his desk and sat back down in his chair, leaving the Israeli standing in the middle of the bullpen. “What do you know of the current situation?”

She half-sat on the edge of his desk, casting a glance back at McGee as she did so. “Other than this one being bad manners even on the Mossad’s scale? I told you, I found her through her buyers. I can tell you more about them than Gisele.”

He pulled out the picture of Ziva and Damon and turned it around for her to see. “Do you know who this man with Ziva is?”

She considered the photo, and then looked back up at him. “Gisele has a lieutenant known as Titan. More of a shadow, really. This man matches his description.”

“His name is Damon Werth. He helped Ziva kidnap one of my agents early Monday morning,” Gibbs said, watching for her reaction.

It was an interesting one to observe. Her face and body did not so much go blank as flat-out empty. The last time he had seen an expression like that had been on Tony’s face, when Gibbs had relayed the notification of Ziva’s supposed death. What that meant here and now, he couldn’t be sure. It looked like as much shock as one like her would betray, but he still suspected she already knew about Damon and possibly about Tony, too.

Her voice, when she spoke, was similarly empty. “And you think that’s why I’m here.”

“Director David,” he said, spitting Ziva’s father’s name out like it was something foul, “claims to have had no knowledge of her current mission. In fact, he’s the one who informed NCIS that his daughter died in July.”

“Haven’t you had enough dealings with Mossad to know that they lie?”

“Mossad? Yes. Shin-Beit? No.” He leaned forward in his chair. “If I find out you were sent here to clean up after Mossad’s mistakes, you had better not let me catch you.”

The emptiness snapped, like a switch thrown off. “If she gets hurt on my watch, you’re welcome to.” Her voice was tight, sharp, and the most natural-sounding he’d heard her yet. The wording, too, did not sound carefully picked over.

He leaned back in his chair again. “Then I think we’ve got an understanding.”

 

* * *

 

In normal times, Vance paid only minimal attention to the MCRT bullpen as he passed through it on his way in and out of his office. In recent months, though, he’d developed the habit of consciously allocating a second or three for assessing Gibbs’ team. Since Agent DiNozzo had gone missing, Vance made a point of stopping by and exchanging a few words whenever he came back in.

He had all of half a second to be relieved at their minimally reduced tension before he noticed the stranger. He’d almost not noticed her, but he was looking directly at McGee when the man stepped aside, revealing the unknown woman.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” Vance said, announcing his presence.

“Director,” Yates replied respectfully, chorused a moment off beat by McGee.

Gibbs, predictably, gave Vance his usual dry look. “Leon.”

The visitor said nothing as she looked between him and Gibbs. Other than that, her expression and posture remained opaque.

Vance raised a single eyebrow ever-so-slightly at Gibbs. “Were you planning on introducing me to your guest, Gibbs?”

“Wasn’t planning on it, Leon,” Gibbs replied, sardonic as ever.

Vance gave Gibbs another look, and then took two steps forward and held out his hand to the strange woman. “Leon Vance; I’m the director of NCIS.”

Her handshake was firm and steady. “Officer Yael Dunski, Shin Beit.”

Vance held her hand for the appropriate duration and then let go, all the while hoping that his poker face was as good as he thought it was. “Nice to meet you,” he told her. “What brings you to NCIS?”

“Gisele. You’re chasing her, I’m chasing some of her buyers.”

Vance gave her a half-nod, and then turned to Gibbs and said: “We need to talk.”

Thankfully, Gibbs just growled an order at his team and followed Vance upstairs.

As soon as the office door closed behind them, Vance turned around and said, “That is a Dunski you have there.”

“Yeah, I got that when she introduced herself.” Gibbs’ sarcasm was still on the side of hostile. He had clearly not had coffee in too long.

“Yeah?” Vance asked as he walked over to the coffee pot in the corner and poured both of them a cup. “She tell you that she comes from an entire family of spooks, three or four generations back?” He timed his speech to have just enough time to walk back to Gibbs and give the man his coffee.

Gibbs gave Vance a long look, then took a pull from the mug before he replied. “What do you know about her?”

“About her, specifically, nothing,” Vance replied truthfully. “But I’ve heard quite a few things about her family.”

“And what glowing things does Director David have to say about them?”

Vance didn’t bother to deny Gibbs’ accurate assessment of his source. “He’s not too fond of them, actually.” To put it mildly, but Vance had never been treated to more than the barest hints of Mossad’s internal politics. “Though he admits that they are highly talented, if equally entitled, intelligence officers. Imagine what four generations of that kind of indoctrination from the cradle can achieve.”

Gibbs just walked over to the coffee pot and poured himself some more. Vance was entirely unsurprised when all he would say was, “Your coffee tastes like crap, Leon.”

 

* * *

 

It took longer than she’d anticipated, getting back to NCIS, but Yael had little doubt that Ziva’s old team would still be there. Ziva had told her enough, at least about this. Yael knew where to look for the mattresses rolled in cabinets, and she knew the distinct crumpled look of a clothes that had been in a duffel bag for a while. Ziva’s old team had been living out of the office for a while, and there was no reason for that to change yet.

There had been security checkpoints at the entrance to the Navy Yard and then at the ground floor of the NCIS building, but no third checkpoint at the MCRT floor. Yael walked into the squad room balancing a paper bag in her left hand and a grocery bag and a tray of coffees in her right. The three agents were at their desks, predictably, and the pale giraffe of a goth standing by McGee’s desk had to be Sciuto. All heads turned in Yael’s direction, which - between the silence of the empty squad room and the distinct scent of dinner - was no surprise at all.

“Is that for us?” McGee asked, eying the coffee and the Panera bag like someone who’s been living off of - what was that name? - Nutter Butters for a while.

What would Ziva say, if she was being playful? “No, it’s for the hit team hidden in my backpack,” Yael said dryly, offering Yates the coffee tray with her paper cup - the default coffee - nearest to her, and then turning to McGee once Yates had taken hers. He was looking more embarrassed than she’d angled for, so she added, a little more warmly: “Of course it’s for everyone.” There was no room on his desk so she walked past it to the one assigned to her, dropped the bags there, extracted his and Sciuto’s coffees, turned around and put the cups in their hands

Yates was already making a beeline to the food. “Thanks,” she said. There was surprise in her voice, but it was faint. Yael tuned her out; that one was a win.

So was Sciuto, with her childlike excitement, but Sciuto was loud. “You brought me Caf-Pow!” She squealed, then turned to McGee and repeated it. “She brought me Caf-Pow!” She turned back to Yael, eyes still wide as saucers and joy still spilled across her face. The ridiculousness could’ve been amusing under different circumstances. “How did you know to get me a Caf-Pow?”

McGee still seemed more in shock than anything. Perhaps she should stop expecting that to change and count that one as a win as well. Gibbs, however, was still pretending to not glare at her distrustfully.

She’d known that one might take a while. She knew the price Ziva had had to pay.

It took perhaps the third of a second to compile these impression and push back the thoughts of Ziva, not long enough for any of them but the Marine to notice her flickering gaze. Yael put on a neutrally friendly smile and offered her hand to Sciuto. “I might have overheard that one. Officer Yael Dunski, Shin Beit. You must be Abby Sciuto.”

Sciuto shook her hand. “I know who you are. Tim told me you were here. Why are you here, again?”

Sciuto had to find out everything for herself, or pretend to. Ziva’s voice was in Yael’s memory, again. “To figure out what the hell is going on,” she replied and turned back to the bags. Yates had already spread out the contents of the dinner one and was eating her way through one of the chicken-and-noodles soup cartons.

Good. These people would be no good to her if they collapsed.

In her default shade of benign, she said, “I brought something of everything. Dig in.” She picked her own coffee and one of the toasted bagels. “Dinner’s for you, too,” she tossed at Gibbs behind her shoulder.

She’d be damned if she got him coffee on the job, but food wasn’t coffee.

Gibbs simplified the situation by ignoring her, pushing himself up and grabbing his gun and badge from the top drawer. “I’ll be back,” he bit at McGee before pushing his way past the three of them where they stood in the aisle, only pausing to place a possessive hand on Sciuto’s shoulder and plant a kiss on her cheek.

That was for Yael to see as much as it was for Sciuto to smile at.

McGee was yet to move. Yael had had enough of that. She’d known to expect it, but that did not mean she had to put up with it. The man was not responding to the sense of humor he was supposed to be used to; she might as well treat him like a newbie while he was behaving as one. Ziva had done that, early on, and it had worked well for her.

Yael plucked the broccoli-cheddar soup carton that Ziva had told her was one of his favorites and put it in his hands. “I know it’s easier to give everything,” she told him in the voice she reserved for very new trainees, “but you’re not going to be able to help anyone if you don’t keep yourself in one piece.”

Yates seemed amused, more than anything; Sciuto, on the other hand, had her entire body poised in suspicious possessiveness and was giving Yael a glare that might as well be not concealed at all.

The woman took a year to tolerate Ziva. This was not as bad as Yael prepared for.

“Right,” McGee said, pulling the vowel much as she’d expected him to by the apprehension written all over him.

Yates, meanwhile, took her soup back to her desk and was sitting on the corner of it, frowning slightly at the plasma screen as she ate. It was the expression of someone attempting to find a new angle from which to attack familiar data. There had been a map on the plasma, earlier in the day, but now it had the photos of 22-year-old Daniel Singer and 28-year-old Oren Shimoni, side by side with the false contact information that they had given passport control.

“They took the bus into the city from the airport,” Yates said to no one in particular. “We caught them on a traffic camera at Union Station, and then lost them in the rush hour traffic. They could have gone anywhere from there, by train, bus, or taxi.”

It had the sound of a brainstorm serve more than a note-to-self, so Yael repeated what she’d said earlier: “They would have gone through several false stops before reaching their destination.” _Shimoni is trained._ That part could bear to not be repeated. “If they couldn’t make it there by nightfall, they’d stop at a motel: Singer won’t travel on a Shabbath.”

“That still doesn’t tell us where they _went_ ,” McGee said. “Just that they’re here. Somewhere.”

Sciuto’s face twisted. “That’s not good enough, McGee,” she snapped at him. “Tony and Ziva are out there, and we have to find them.”

And that, finally, was new. Yael would’ve blinked at it, if she was on the other side of a one-way mirror from them. The Sciuto in Yael’s head would have been quick to be angry with Ziva and write her off; the Sciuto in front of her, slurping loudly on her drink, seemed to be just as concerned with Ziva as with DiNozzo. It wouldn’t go in Yael’s official report, but it was something to note down to tell Ziva later.

It could be argued that Sciuto was too stupid to live. Yael would not make that argument. She crumpled the empty bagel wrap and dumped it in the trash. They already had the financial and facial recognition search running; a different approach was needed. “She’d keep him with her,” she said, looking at no one. “Ziva’s the one we need to find. And that’s too many potential locations to go door-to-door.”

“Then we need to find some way to eliminate some of those possibilities,” Yates said. “This is going to be another long night, isn’t it?”

That, at least, was an easy serve. Yael dumped the empty paper cup, too, and fished out the Taster’s Choice and the milk from the grocery bag. “So that’s coffee for everyone, yes?” Ziva’s speech patterns and Ziva’s inflection rolled off her tongue easily, effortlessly, even in a foreign tongue.

She was met by three blankly stunned faces. Figures. She raised both her hands with the shrug, sorry excuse for coffee in one hand and milk in the other. “What?”

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, September 12_

 

Saturday morning found Tim blinking at the early sunrise sky, visible through the squad room's skylight. Again. He'd grabbed enough underwear, tank tops and socks from his place earlier that week that he wouldn't need to go back to his place for a while.

He groaned slightly as he sat up, reaching bleary-eyed for his cell phone where it lay on his desk. Six-twenty-eight, two minutes before his alarm would go off.

He'd gotten used to this mad schedule. Wasn't this just fucking great.

There was a certain satisfaction in using that word, even if it was only in his mind and even if he could repeat it out loud and no one would hear. "Fucking great," he repeated, the words more a mutter than anything else, as he pushed himself all the way up to standing, grabbing a shirt, his toothbrush and his comb.

Five minutes later he walked back into the squad room, feeling a whole lot more like himself – or as much as he had since putting on his gloves in Tony's kitchen five days before – and then paused, thinking for a moment that his mind was playing tricks on him, because the squad room smelled like food and coffee.

The next second he realized that it wasn't an illusion. Dunski was at her desk, possibly checking through e-mails while sipping on her own coffee, and there was another coffee and a paper bag on his desk and then another paper bag on Cassie's.

"Morning," he said, because that was polite, and then "I can take care of myself, you know," because she was being annoying.

She looked up at him, far too crisp and alert for someone who couldn't have possibly gotten more than four hours of sleep had any right to be and just as annoyingly calm as she'd been the day before. "Morning," she replied, and: "That is not what this is about."

"Then what?" he asked as he sat down, making himself reach for the computer mouse before the maddeningly-smelling paper bag.

Her smile was humorless, but maybe-possibly warm. "It's about me preferring to do good where it's possible, even if it's a minor thing."

He gave up and reached for the food. He could appreciate the sentiment behind her actions, but having someone taking care of him - an _outsider_ taking care of him - just felt weird.

The elevator dinged again, this time heralding Cassie. Tim busied himself with his breakfast while she and Dunski went through very nearly the same lines, even if Cassie was more composed than he and Dunski a teensy bit more distant with her.

He hadn't imagined that shade of warmth, then.

"Anything new?" Dunski asked.

Tim shook his head and swallowed the last bite of bagel. "Nothing."

"Good news, bad news."

"How's that?" asked Cassie.

On the other side of the divider he heard Dunski's chair creak, and then she stood up and came around so she could maintain eye contact with both Cassie and him. "Bad news, Singer isn't staying the weekend at his grandparents' community, the way he usually does when visiting the States. Good news, we now know Shimoni's in charge of the two of them."

Daniel Singer was basically a kid, his military training limited to that of a grunt. Oren Shimoni was a former Counter Terrorism Unit captain. "Well, that's just great," Tim said.

"Training means competence," Dunski said, but it didn't sound like agreement. "It also means predictability."

"You're saying you know how he thinks," Cassie said.

Dunski's shrug had the quality of a dance move rather than natural movement. "Or I'm supposed to."

"Well, Abby got her hands on aerial photography of nearly all of Gisele’s potential hideouts," Tim said. "We're going to set up a computerized scan, but that'll take a while." Where a “while” was the scale of days, and that was once Abby and he got the scan running. Gibbs talked Vance into assigning them some photography analysts, but the task was _that_ time-consuming.

“There's something else we can try and track," Dunski said, a little slowly. "Guns and explosives they can either get in Israel, or cook themselves. Flash drives can be mailed. They are here for something exotic that they would rather not mail in any way, and yet they believe they can get through customs. If they are here, it follows that either she has likely already acquired whatever that is, or she is due to receive it soon."

"It's a long shot, but it's a lead."

The elevator dinged even as she spoke.

"What is?" Gibbs demanded.

Tim tuned the three of them out. If anything important came up, Cassie would fill him in. In the meantime, he had a visual search algorithm to write.

 

* * *

 

That he was awake was one of the last things to come to him. It ranked pretty low, on the list of things that mattered. The loneliness came first, soaked into all his senses like knee-deep snow into wool pants, slipping down into leather shoes, cold and wet and pervasive. It was thick and heavy in his lungs, choking him, but he couldn’t get it out. The cough came second, the futile body-wracking attempt to dislodge the cold weight eating into him, and the pain. The pain was hazy at first, omnipresent and nonspecific. The panicked despair was much sharper.

It was familiar, that feeling that clawed its way from inside him to meet the loneliness that was tearing into him from the outside. This feeling has been there a long time, as long as he could remember. It was alone with his mother, and then just alone; it was Kate’s empty body in his arms; it was carrying the prosecution speech against himself, alone in a holding cell, accused of murder; it was the back of a C-130, one short; and it was bright blue light in his eyes, cough burning through his lungs and trachea like so many razors and Kate, wearing a breathing mask.

That, finally, made him pay attention, catalogue the pain - head pulsating, hand throbbing, lungs torn up from the inside - and then open his eyes.

Open his eyes to darkness that matched the one in his head.

Of course it was dark. It had always been dark. Tony kept putting other people between him and the darkness, though, clinging to everything humanity had to offer to not have to look at himself. Finally alone in the dark, like maybe he was always supposed to be, it occurred to him that there wasn’t much to look at.

What was he, anyway? Just a miserable, pathetic ball of need sandwiched in the darkness. Ziva knew. That was certain like the bout of cough, turning him inside out and bringing more pain, his chest very nearly numb with it and his head hitting the wall.

Hitting the wall again? He wasn’t sure.

The thought that Gibbs knew, too, came stuttered and at first unsure. But Gibbs wasn’t coming. That much was certain, by now: Gibbs wasn’t coming. It followed that Gibbs had a reason, that Gibbs knew Tony wasn’t worth the effort. That Gibbs had had enough of Tony’s blunders, of Tony putting people between him and the darkness and getting them killed.

He shut his eyes tightly against the darkness and against the blue lights that weren’t there because Ziva’s hand was in his hair, against his scalp, touch cool and warm at the same time, like everything he ever wanted, destroying everything he still was and giving the darkness free reign.

He deserved it, anyway. Too many deaths racked up against his one miserable, worthless life. He’d promised it to her, just before the confirmation of that caress: her revenge, his death. The one worthy thing he had to give. And because he was a failure, it took him this long to understand that. Too much time wasted on -

The memories scattered, ebbed away. He’d been looking for something, someone. He’d thought it mattered. _Forget,_ Ziva had said, and now he couldn’t remember.

Didn’t matter. That too was Ziva’s, if she wanted it.

Would there be blue lights, if he opened his eyes? Was this just a plague nightmare, and Kate would be there to tease after and Gibbs to whisper _You will not die_ in his ear?

Ziva was in his face, though, screaming at him from above, hands fisted in his shirt, palm sharp across his cheek. Ziva was everywhere, eyes opened or closed, darkness inside or out. Ziva was real, too real to be denied, too solid and alive for him to want to deny her. He’d trade the blue lights for Ziva, if she could get out of there. If killing him would kill the darkness, for her. He didn’t have what it takes to put himself between the darkness and someone else, but Ziva didn’t care. She was strong enough.

Another cascade of cough-spasm. This time his stomach contracted with it, too, and he dry-heaved, chocking on bitterness and vomit that wasn’t there. His mouth tasted like vomit, anyway.

It took him a while to realize that he was crying.


	6. Undertow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life in Gisele’s camp is not without dissent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** continuing themes from previous chapters, single psychologically intense scene.
> 
>  **Israeli idiom moment.** Golani is an IDF infantry brigade. Known as The First Brigade, they’re considered the epitome of what infantry _is_ and have a reputation for brutal efficiency; however, “Golanchik” (colloquial for a Golani soldier) in Israeli idiom also denotes a coarse and not-overly-bright person.

## Arc Two: Maelstrom

_Sunday, September 13_

 

It might have been a factory, once. Now it was mostly a large, echoing empty space. The first floor was taken, though. It might have been offices, back when the ground floor was supposed to be a machine shop, but now it was where Gisele's crew lived. One room was still an office, so to speak: the one at the end of the hallway that oversaw the others.

Oren leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed on his chest.

"He's a cop," he said bluntly.

Ziva barely glanced up at him over the laptop. "He's not."

Oren didn't bother to dignify her dismissal and replied to her words instead. "So you know who I'm talking about."

"Yes, but not because I suspect him." She closed the laptop lid and half-stood, leaning over it with her palms pressed against the table. "Spit it out, Oren."

He stepped into the room and stood on the other side of her desk. "I'll feel better if I took your lap dog on a walk in the woods. The kind that involves a gun, and then a shovel."

"He's not a cop," she repeated, tone flat and even.

He dragged himself the other chair and sat down. "And you're so certain, because?"

"Because no one would have him. Don't say a word about cover stories, Oren," she added. She shook her head. "I was there for his dishonorable discharge."

Bad news: the Rottweiler really wasn't a cop. More bad news: Ziva had a soft spot for the guy.

"How'd you find him, anyway?"

"His old boss was the competition."

 _Competition is a killer._ It was an old saying, in Ziva's current line of work.

She leaned back in her chair, arms loose at her sides. "You sound like a little girl when you're jealous, Oren, did anyone ever tell you that?"

"The hell I'm jealous."

"The fuck you aren't."

"Are you fucking him?"

She seemed amused, more than anything, as she said: "None of your fucking business."

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Definitely my _fucking_ business."

"Charming, Oren. Now you sound like a Golanchik."

He grinned at her. "Admit it, Ziva. You're bored to death among the goyim."

She snorted derisively. "They have their uses."

"They have bigger guns," he said with a straight face.

"I'd slam your face into this table," she said conversationally, "except I think that's what you're angling for."

"You are so sleeping with him."

"Maybe I _will_ let you two go on a walk. So he can feed you your limbs, and I'll have some peace and quiet."

"And what will you tell Benny?"

"I'll tell him that his hot-headed right-hand finally picked a fight with somebody bigger than him. His stepson's death he won't forgive me. You?" she shrugged.

"You've definitely been with the goyim too long, Ziva. Is that how you treat family?"

"Fuck off to hell, Oren. My family's dead." She leaned forward. "And if you say anything about this only being until I start my own..."

"Do you see a kipa on my head?" he demanded. They were nearly in each other's faces, like this.

"You've been trying to get in my pants since you set foot here."

"Sleeping with the help is bad for business."

"Don't tempt me, Oren," she said softly, dangerously. His jeans were too tight. "You two neanderthals are not the only ones around here who know how to kill."

The knock on Gisele's door was far louder than it had to be.

"All good to go, Boss." Werth's empty-brained military-drone inflection put Oren's teeth on edge, as it always did. Then Werth shifted into a different, more familiar tone: "All right here, Boss?"

Oren turned around to glare at him. Werth replied with a condescending stare, like Oren was the idiot who got kicked out of service and Werth was the decorated captain.

Ziva pushed herself up and picked up the laptop. "Everything is fine," she said shortly, shifting to English while ignoring the way Werth's eyes clung to her every movement. "Don't mess with my toys while I'm gone, Oren," she added, in English still.

He twisted around to follow her exit, head held high like every commander ever. "Im o bli dofek?" he asked in Hebrew, like before they were interrupted. _The ones with or without a pulse?_

She paused at the door and turned her head back towards him. "Both."

 

* * *

 

The good news was, DiNozzo hadn't been sick again since Damon had been there last, a day before. The bad news was, the bottle of Gatorade was untouched where Damon had left it, suggesting that the guy wasn't just sleeping off whatever the hell Ziva knocked him out with on Friday, he was _still unconscious._

"Damn it," Damon muttered as he unlocked the door. "What the hell was that shit, anyway?"

He left the door unlocked behind him. No one else would come down there and DiNozzo wasn't going anywhere. Damon wasn't a fan of locked cells, even when he was the one with the key.

He put the new bottle next to the other one and crouched at about a foot distance from the mattress. DiNozzo seemed paler than a week in the dark summed up to, even if that was difficult to tell in said darkness. His breathing was shallow, laboured and wrong, somehow, far from any rhythm of sleep or unconsciousness.

He coughed, even as Damon watched him. It was a tired, wet sound, nothing like any cough Damon had heard before.

"Fuck." Damon reached with one hand to tilt DiNozzo's head backwards as he found his pulse with his other hand.

DiNozzo's head rolled under his touch easily enough, but his eyes opened at the touch. The darkness yet again meant that Damon couldn't tell much of anything, but he was still pretty sure that DiNozzo's gaze was unfocused. His pulse, under Damon's fingers, was dehydration-pulse, rapid and shallow, and his skin was clammy. The skin tone seemed good, though, not yet the dry dough feeling of serious dehydration.

"Hey," Damon said. Quietly, because it was spooky down there, but clearly enough that DiNozzo should be able to hear it.

DiNozzo's eyes tracked his face, but he didn't say anything. There was no telling how lucid he was or, more likely, wasn't.

It could have been worse, but it was still bad enough. He slid an arm under DiNozzo's shoulders and cradled the back of his head. Damon could feel a lump there, and DiNozzo grimaced at the touch; that was new, but there wasn't much Damon could do about it except try to be gentle. He got the older man into a semi-upright position, then used his free hand to open the bottle of Gatorade and held it to DiNozzo's lips.

"I'm going to need you to drink this. Small sips," he ordered, tipping the bottle just a little. He managed to bite back the sigh of relief as DiNozzo licked the liquid from his chapped lips, before opening his mouth enough for Damon to pour some in. DiNozzo swallowed reflexively, and that was another good sign.

He spent the next several minutes mentally cursing as he allowed DiNozzo to drink about half the bottle in small sips. It'd been a couple years since Damon had done this last, but Iraq was a harsh teacher that way; Damon had gotten too many privates through not making themselves sicker by drinking too much, too fast.

"More," DiNozzo said, voice soft and rasping.

"Keep what I gave you down, and you'll get more in a few minutes," Damon replied. He really didn't want to have to clean up any more puke.

DiNozzo made a very small nod.

At least he understood what Damon was saying. If Damon was to get him to drink both bottles - which was what he should do - then he was going to be stuck there a while.

Damn, but this job sucked sometimes.

 

* * *

 

Ziva's door wasn't locked, but Damon rattled it anyway, trying to not tear it out of its frame. The door was flimsy, he was angry, and the point was to keep the door between him and Ziva until she was awake enough to look and think before throwing that damn knife.

That second damn knife, that is: the thunk of the first one embedding itself on the other side of the door was a good enough indicator that she was awake enough.

"Damn it, Damon," she said, still groggily, when he shouldered the door open and pushed his way in. Predictably, she had a gun in one hand and another knife in the other. "What is it?"

"We need to talk," he said, shutting the door behind him and throwing them back into pitch blackness for just a moment before she turned on the emergency searchlight she kept for a bedside lamp. She adjusted the lamp so that the beam of light passed between them, casting both their faces into deep shadows. His more than hers, probably, as she was lower.

She pushed her weapons back under her pillow and sat up properly. "No, really," she said irritably, throwing her blanket away. "Because you usually wake me up for no reason."

Damn right he didn't, and he wasn't surprised that she'd be a bitch about it. "I just spent the last three hours in the basement," he told her, and if he couldn't throw ice back in her face than he had fire. "What the hell did you do to him?"

Her eyes narrowed, expression shutting off even more. "I interrogated him," she said, voice no more readable than her face. "Asked questions. Left a few bruises. What is the problem?"

Damon had been on the receiving end of punches to the face that were less stunning than her casualness. "The problem is that he didn't drink the Gatorade I left him last night while he was still sleeping off your _interrogation_." He spat that last word out. To hell with that, so long as he wasn't breathing too hard. "He hasn't eaten anything since, what, Thursday night? Have you ever had to clean up stomach bile someone's puked up before?"

"He shouldn't have been unconscious that long," she said, frowning and sitting straighter. "Especially not at a partial dose."

"The first thing he should have done when he woke up and saw that bottle of Gatorade right in front of him was drink it. I don't think he even _moved_ , Ziva," Damon said. "Unless you count from coughing his fucking lungs out."

And that got her to wake up the rest of the way, fucking finally. "He has a bad chest," she said, "but he wasn't coughing on Friday. How sick is he?"

"Well, he was still sweating," he said bitingly, "so he wasn't completely dehydrated yet. But he was sweating because he has a fever, which isn't fucking helping."

"It's 65 degrees down there, Damon. It's not the Sandbox. I'm more worried about that cough."

The careless exasperation in which she'd said that wasn't helping. "Two and a half days without drinking anything will still leave you dehydrated even if it was thirty below," he snapped.

"Well, he's kept it down once you got him to drink it, has he not?" she snapped back. "So that is not where the problem is."

If there had been any furniture nearby for him to throw, he would have. Instead, he just balled his fists tighter, fingernails digging even deeper into the palms of his hands. "You're right. The problem is that you gave him that shit and then left him down there. You're the one who said we needed to keep him alive."

And that, finally, got some emotion out of her. "I don't want him dead!" she snapped. The heat in her cheeks was visible even in the miserable lighting. "Damn it, Damon! If I'd known..." She swallowed, hands fisting in the sheets for just a moment.

"If you'd known, what? You'd go down there when he's calling out for you?" Damon snarled.

"Well, I didn't know that, either," she snapped at him. "How could I -" He could almost see her stuffing her anger back under that Ice Queen facade. "I am trying to keep us all safe," she continued after a moment, voice low and precise. "Or as safe as possible. You know how complicated this situation is, Damon. I never _meant_ for Tony to get sick. We have spare blankets, and we should have Tylenol; he can't take Advil on an empty stomach. And I will go see him tomorrow. I promise." Her voice softened as she spoke, going from an inflection all too much like her Gisele persona to something much more recognizable, if still too distant for comfort.

He almost spat out _You should never have brought him here_ but checked himself at the last second. Ziva cared about her former colleague, even if she sucked at showing it. And if she needed to be reminded, then hell, that was what Damon was there for, why she'd kept him and let him in. The anger bled out of him, slowly, leaving something that wasn't quite a headache behind. "Good," he said.

He saw the ice drain out of her in return, bit by bit, revealing the familiar exhaustion and worry he'd known - hoped - were there. "We're almost there, Damon," she said. "Just another week and then we can all go home."

It was one in the goddamned morning, and he'd spent most of the last three hours playing nursemaid in the dark. Damon nodded, tiredly, and turned to leave. He just hoped like hell that they'd all survive the coming week.

 

* * *

 

_Monday, September 14_

 

The noise was loud, jarringly so, metallic and echoing. He winced involuntarily. It took him a moment to realize that it had to be the lock coming off the door. He opened his eyes, hoping for Damon to have returned.

The back lit figure was all wrong, though: too short, too slim.

 _Ziva_.

He almost crawled towards her, cringed away, tried to stay utterly still. The mixed instincts hit him all at once, and he didn't even manage to fully sort them apart before being covered by something soft and light, warm almost. He clawed at the word: _blanket._

The effort of dredging it out made him miss Ziva, Ziva kneeling in front of him, her hand moving away from a lumpy package.

His heart flitted in his chest, head even lighter at the possibility of more needles. _Please don't_ got cut with _please, yes,_ but just the thought of speaking made his whole body feel dead and heavy like lead. His whole body, except for his chest: the dark, invisible talons got a kick from the thought.

Breathing shallowly against that sharper pain, he closed his eyes, ceding this round to the darkness.

Something cool and soft touched his cheek, putting pressure on one of his many bruises as his head was tilted sideways and up. The sudden flare of sharper pain it caused brought him back to himself, to Ziva's presence, and he opened his eyes again to the sight of her face, cast in shadow, her other hand ghosting against his forehead.

The darkness was trying to get to her, too, sliding across her skin. He opened his mouth to warn her, but he should have known he'd just fail. What beast of darkness was hiding in his chest tried to claw its way out as soon as it got the chance, and he only barely managed to clamp his mouth shut before it climbed all the way up.

Ziva let go of his face. He thought - dreaded, hoped - that she was leaving, that she'd be safe. Instead she sat with her back to the wire mesh and pulled his head into her lap. He could hear her fumbling with the package and so he closed his eyes again. The needle never came. Instead, something hard bumped against his tightly-pressed lips, followed by something wet and frothy-feeling. The scent caught up with him a moment later, so utterly alien that it took him several more moments to place it.

_Chocolate._

The press of his lips relaxed. He wanted the chocolate, wanted little more than to open his mouth and lick it in, gulp it from the bottle. There were still needles and claws in his throat, though, and the second he opened his mouth the darkness would come lashing out and latch on to Ziva.

He couldn't fail her again. He _couldn't._ He would've whimpered if he could, but there was too much pressure in his chest.

"You haven't eaten in three days." Ziva's voice was loud enough to make his head hurt, hurt even worse. "You need to drink this."

 _No,_ he wanted to plead. _Please, no._ All he could do was look up at her, and hope that she would understand, that she'd be able to read it in his eyes, in his face.

Ziva had always been able to read him. How could she not know what he was doing? She had to understand, had to know. Maybe, he thought, trying to push the maddening scent out, maybe this was a test.

"Drink this," Ziva ordered. When he didn't respond she continued, more irritably: "I said, _drink this._ You will not die."

Too surprised to remember anything else, he blinked at her and nearly said _But I'm already dead._ The words never came, crushed between the cough and the frothy chocolate shake. He sputtered, struggled to breathe, and somehow managed to swallow the monster together with the chocolate.

He had to have passed the test, because she carded her fingers through his hair again. Maybe he was shivering, because Ziva couldn't be unsteady. The chocolate came in regular mouthfuls, and if swallowing required more than blind instinct, he would have choked instead. He couldn't think with Ziva's solid warmth against his back and face, with her fingers raking through his hair. That was what he was trembling for.

"There," Ziva said, the word sliding in between one caress and another. "That's better. That's good, Tony."

 

* * *

 

It was the smell of cardamom and coffee that finally alerted Gibbs that someone was in his house. He wasn't particularly worried; anyone with ill intents wouldn't have bothered making coffee. Most people didn't bother to bring coffee and cardamom with them if they were only planning on robbing a house or trying to kill someone. That, plus the fact that he hadn't heard whoever it was moving about, gave him a rather good idea of who it might be.

He didn't turn to watch Dunski coming down the stairs, finally making enough noise so she knew he would recognize her presence. He heard her approach across the cement floor, and then two glasses of coffee were set down on his workbench as she pulled a saw horse out to sit on.

"Could've used mugs, you know. There are plenty in the cabinet," he commented, finishing off the last pull of bourbon from the mason jar in his hand.

She huffed softly, picking up one glass and holding it cupped in one hand. "That's not how it's done."

"And bringing your own supplies to make coffee when you break into someone's house is?" he challenged, finally taking a good look at her. She looked as tired as he felt. She'd ditched her office look, too: she was wearing a knitted jumper, her ponytail hung low and the natural-seeming makeup she'd worn to the office was noticeable in its absence. He didn't really know her well enough to know whether she wore makeup like a shield as some women did, but he filed away the bit of information anyway. Typical Israeli, though, she looked cold even in her jumper, despite the fact that it was still early fall and the nights weren't getting that chilly yet.

"I'm particular about my coffee," she said wryly, "and I would not think you'd forgotten your front door was unlocked."

"Why are you here?" he asked, not picking up the second cup of coffee yet. Too hot, still, and the paranoid part of his brain questioned whether or not he'd ticked the Israelis off enough for them to want him dead.

"Coffee," she said with a too-straight expression that melted back to tiredness a second later.

He weighed his options; he'd noticed over the last several days that Dunski never brought coffee for him, despite that she'd regularly did for Tim and Cassie. He'd never called her on it. Coffee runs were his own chance to stretch his legs and clear his head. For her to come to his house after work and make him coffee, deliberately putting herself in an uncomfortable position, meant she was playing at something.

Well, he wasn't about to play by her rules.

He picked up the sorry excuse for coffee she'd made and took a sip. It could've been been decent coffee, if she hadn't gone and ruined it with shit that did not belong in coffee. "And?" he prompted.

She took a few sips from her own coffee and brought the glass down again, but did not let go of it. "We had time to talk between May and this," she said, "to catch up. Ziva and I. One thing never made sense." She leaned back slightly on the saw horse, and her gaze grew sharper.

She was waiting for him to prompt her again, he could tell. He debated making her be the first to talk, but he wasn't in the mood to play games. "You gonna get to the point any time soon or just draw this out all night?"

"The records say you executed Ari, and the Ziva I knew then would have nothing but hatred for whoever would've done that."

Gibbs met her even stare. The casual tone of her voice could have been a challenge. "People

change," he countered.

"That's one option," she said. There was some sort of an emotion lurking under the quiet intensity, too faint to be recognized. "Though I do believe she took that mission as a fuck-you to her father. Two other options would be that you have somehow successfully made the case to her after, or that you were not the one who killed Ari."

"Do you really need me to tell you what happened that night?" he asked as she took several sips of her coffee.

This time she put the glass down properly. "To know what happened? No. To know what you think happened?" Beat, as her chin rose almost imperceptibly. "I'm beginning to think that I do."

"Ziva killed Ari," he replied. First time he'd said those words out loud. "There's nothing more to know."

"Except the reason why," she replied evenly. "To kill another person can be murder, execution, self-defense. I think that if you did not care for this question, or if you were certain, you would not dismiss it."

Anger boiled to the surface. He hadn't liked this train of thought when Vance had brought it up earlier in the summer, and he still didn't like it now. Especially now, when it was harder to believe Ziva was doing the right thing after kidnapping Tony. "And did she tell _you_ why she killed him?" he challenged.

"Because Ari claimed loyalty to Al Qaida and not to Israel," she said, "and because he was about to prove it by killing you."

"Tell me something I don't already know," he snapped.

"You didn't sound so sure a moment ago," she retorted. "She never had enough to lose to give up even that little without a damn good reason, and I -" She cut herself off abruptly, mouth snapping closed, and he could practically see her reining her anger in.

Interesting.

"And you what?" he prodded.

She looked aside, mouth pulled in what could be a grimace or a particularly flat smile. It was a moment before she said, "There aren't too many people I genuinely give a damn about."

That, at least, was closer to honest than anything else she might have said. He took a sip of his own coffee to buy himself a moment before replying. "We'll bring her home."


	7. Tailspin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The more the team learns, they more they worry.

_Tuesday, September 15_

 

The stack of files on Cassie’s desk was getting precariously high as she reviewed her case notes for the third time in as many days. There just wasn’t much else to _do_ while they waited on Tim’s search routines or her undercover contacts to turn something up. Making sure her notes were up-to-date and accurate was also good for retracting her mental steps, trying to find a new angle or something she’d missed before. She’d had no luck so far, though.

Eight days since Tony had gone missing, and they weren’t much closer to finding him then they had been when Cassie had arrived at DC on Thursday. The knowledge that Ziva was in fact Gisele, and the one who’d taken Tony, raised more questions than answers. The more they tried to figure out the truth behind Gisele, the longer the list of unanswered questions got.

The team was, predictably, falling apart. Oh, they were still a functioning unit from the outside, but Cassie had known those people long enough, in both good and bad times. Abby was crying almost constantly, now, alternating between silent moping and hysterics well outside of her usual scale; Tim had not been home in over a week, except perhaps to pick up clean clothes; Gibbs, for his part, was preternaturally calm by Gibbs-standards. Sure, he was terrorizing his team, his boss and pretty much anyone who wandered into his sight, but it wasn’t yet quite as bad as she remembered it from the time Tony had been dying of pneumonic plague. Cassie also had the sneaking suspicion that Gibbs took to avoiding Autopsy, for pretty much the same reason that the rest of them haunted it. Thank goodness for Ducky and his tea.

Dunski was the unknown factor. It wasn’t that she was hard to work with; she’d slid in unusually smoothly, considering how complicated this particular team could be. But there was something about her that bothered Cassie - something in the way she interacted that just felt _off_. The Israeli woman was calm and professional, had a keen eye for detail and has certainly made all of their lives slightly easier by taking up food and coffee duty. The gesture should have been caring, but there was nothing like it in Dunski’s manner. Cassie couldn’t be quite sure, though. The Israeli was as readable as a regular blank mask. She certainly did not seem nearly as upset as she should have been, if she was as close to Ziva as she claimed. Cassie didn’t like second-guessing the people she worked with, but with Dunski, it was difficult not to.

For example, she had to choose that exact moment to look up from her own notes, straight at Cassie, catching the agent in the act of openly staring at her. Her eyes caught Cassie’s for the fraction of a second, but she might as well have not noticed at all. She stood up in an appearance of total indifference, and said: “More coffee?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Cassie replied with a smile.

Dunski nodded and moved around her desk, but then paused as Gibbs’ phone rang.

“Yeah, Gibbs,” the man said, and that was all: a second later he put the phone down and pushed himself up, making for the elevator. “You coming?” he tossed angrily over his shoulder. Cassie wasn’t sure where they were going, but she was smart enough to follow without question. Dunski did the same.

Once in the elevator, Gibbs punched the button for Abby’s lab’s level. Cassie’s pulse picked up: that phone call had to be either Tim or Abby, telling Gibbs that they had something.

Finally, they had something.

Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t good news. Abby didn’t turn around from her computer, and Tim looked like someone had died.

“What’ve you got?” Gibbs demanded.

“Well...” Tim began. He sounded about as lost as he looked.

“Today, McGee.”

Standing behind Gibbs’ back, Cassie allowed herself to cringe.

Tim’s expression flickered, and then he said, in a monotone, “We’ve been trying to track weapons that Gisele could potentially be offering to sell. Specifically, we searched for exotic, easy to conceal items. These criteria mean primarily biochemical weapons.” Tim paused, but continued before Gibbs could snap at him again. “Research facilities dealing with overt military research are tightly regulated and secure. There have been no security incidents at any of these facilities in the past three months. However...” Tim swallowed, and did not continue.

“It’s the plague, Gibbs.” That was Abby, still facing her computer. Abby’s voice was lifeless - no: it went beyond that, deep into hopelessness. Abby should never sound like that, Cassie thought. That, more than anything, convinced her that she’d just truly heard those words uttered.

With that said, though, Tim seemed able to continue the narrative. “Lowell Pharmaceuticals did not survive Hanna Lowell by much. Their former research staff is now employed by a dozen different players in the pharma market. Some of them continued with their former projects, some didn’t. For those projects that were discontinued, tracking down their old stocks was...” Tim’s hand gripped the edge of the bench as he visibly struggled to steady himself. “Most were properly destroyed,” he continued, voice softer and more strained, “as they should be. But the plague vaccine project was only shelved, not totally discontinued. And somehow the rights for the project ended up with one company, and Dr. Pandy at another, and - and the company that has the stocks had a security glitch just last week. Their internal report didn’t find anything missing, but - but the spores were lyophilized. It’s just white powder in a test tube, Boss. And they didn’t go tube by tube.”

Cassie held her breath, waiting for Gibbs’ reaction. When it came, she didn’t think any of them had been expecting it, even though perhaps they should have. He turned around so fast and so sharply that she only barely managed to get out of his way in time to not get her toes trodden on. He stomped out just as fast, affording her only a glimpse of his expression, set in cold fury. A second later they could all hear the heavy fire door of the stairwell slamming with a loud metallic bang as Gibbs did not bother waiting for the elevator. Tim and Abby did not even twitch at the sound.

Cassie swallowed, trying to force herself out of the shock. The gesture felt useless; it was difficult not to feel useless, herself, to not give in to the cold terror of the thought that they were facing the plague once again.

And once again, Tony’s life was in the balance.

 

* * *

 

The words on the computer screen in front of Tim blurred for the fifth time in half an hour, and finally he pushed away from his desk, standing and stretching. He was sick of sitting there doing _nothing_ , while Tony was out there somewhere, and Ziva...

“This is getting us nowhere,” he snapped. Cassie looked up from her own computer screen. She looked about as exhausted as Tim felt.

Dunski looked up, too. “No new ideas,” she said. “I don’t think she could’ve pulled off this heist on her own, but until the CIA returns your Director’s calls or Mossad mine...” She shrugged and let the sentence trail off.

“This is the best lead we’ve got right now,” Cassie said, but she pushed back from her desk as she said it. Tim felt the urge to hit something, but he’d never much been one for physical violence as a means of releasing frustration.

“We could be looking into known bioweapons traders,” Dunski said. “A genetically engineered plague strain, that’s rather specialized. Whoever has access to that, they’re going to be on at least one database.”

The frustration finally boiled over. “Ziva would have known,” he said. He had been trying not to think about this all day, trying not to think about blue lights and Tony leaning over his trash can to dump a bottle of water over his head or Gibbs standing up on his desk to declare the emergency. “She should have known better, damn it!”

“I know, Tim,” Cassie said softly, coming across the bullpen to sit on the corner of Tony’s desk. Dunski got up and came around, too, forming a loose triangle with the two of them. Her arms were crossed on her chest and her gaze particularly intent.

“You have previous experience with this strain?” she asked.

He saw Cassie look at him expectantly. He had to swallow twice before he could get the words to come out. “Five years ago, Tony...” He had to swallow again. “The owner of Lowell Pharmaceuticals sent a letter to NCIS laced with _Y. pestis_. Tony became infected.”

“Five years ago,” Dunski repeated. Her voice lost its usual detachment. “That’s when Ziva was first assigned here.”

“About a month before Ziva arrived,” Tim clarified. “But she knew.”

“So she had to have known, when she took up this op. She knew what this would mean to you.”

“Ziva can be a bitch, but this is low, even for her,” Tim said. “Tony’s not afraid of much, and she knew that.”

Dunski shook her head. “No,” she said sharply, flatly. “Involving him could not have possibly been part of the operational plan. Something went wrong.”

“Maybe she didn’t mean to get him involved, but she knew what impact this would have on him,” Cassie said.

“I don’t think any of you were supposed to be aware of this at all. That would be better protocol. If not for the Roberts murder - and that doesn’t seem to be part of whatever plan is unfolding here.”

“Then why this? Why the plague?” Tim demanded.

“I can think of two alternatives,” Dunski said, quietly. She uncrossed her arms. “One is that this strain was already on the market, and she might have been particularly interested in taking it off. The other would be that this is simply what she was familiar with, and thus she incorporated it into the plan.” Her mouth stretched into a sad half-smile. “Ziva is not always good with other people’s feelings.”

Cassie made a soft snorting noise. Tim shot her a dark look before sitting down in his seat again. “We have work to do,” he snapped.

Dunski’s smile turned sardonic. “No, really.”

 

* * *

 

Jethro was sawing, and he’d been at it a while. Ducky knew that before he pulled open the door leading down to the basement: the smell of sawdust was quite evident. He coughed a little as he stepped downstairs.

“Really, Jethro,” he called out. “You have got to install better ventilation in this place if you’re going to release all these particulates.” _Or you’ll give yourself emphysema,_ he nearly added, but thought better of it.

Jethro’s shoulders were tense, too tense. Ducky could only imagine the burning contractions he had to have worked his back into, sawing back and forth like that. He didn’t look up at Ducky as he said, “If I wanted better ventilation, I’d open a window, Duck,” but Ducky hadn’t expected him to. Jethro was prone to doing that. He did, however, put the saw down and walk over to the workbench, where he unceremoniously dumped a dozen nails out of a jar and refilled it with bourbon.

Ducky joined him without saying a word or, indeed, without finding himself a seat. He remained standing, as Jethro was.

“You got something for me?” On another day, Jethro’s voice would have been harsher, demanding. On another day, he’d be glaring at Ducky and not staring through a wall. Ducky’s heart constricted in sympathy.

“I wish I knew, Jethro,” he said heavily. “This infernal affair seems to only become more convoluted the more we try to untangle it.”

“Damn it, Duck.” The anger was nearly smothered by the exhaustion. Jethro’s gaze dropped to the workbench. “What the hell is going through her head?”

The question could have been rhetorical, but Ducky knew better than that and so did Jethro. Ducky sighed. “Ziva considered Tony responsible for Rivkin’s death. More than that: she considered him _guilty_ of it. We knew that, and when you returned from Israel, four months ago, you voiced some concerns at her father’s motivation in this.” Ducky paused, trying to find just the right way to phrase the next point. There was none. “You remember Ziva’s early interrogations.”

Gibbs downed the two fingers of bourbon.

“She had been trained for efficacy, indeed, for callousness. She would have been trained to sharpen anger and grief into blades, to channel them into vengeance. And she had lost too much, at too young an age.” Ducky’s words bled dry. Profiling was rooted in empathy, but that didn’t make Ziva’s motives just, only understandable.

“Yeah, I know.”

“It may not be much of a comfort, Jethro, but I do believe that she is acting out of pain, not hatred.”

Finally, Jethro looked up at Ducky, and there was something harsher than tiredness in his eyes as he snapped: “She made the choice to stay.”

“She confessed a difficult truth,” Ducky corrected, gently, “and you both made the only choice you could, given the circumstances.”

“This needs to end, and sooner rather than later.”

“You may want to lean on Officer Dunski,” he said, trying to not let the way he felt about the woman color his words; at least, not too much.

“You sound like you really hit it off with her,” Jethro replied, sarcasm lacing his words.

It was easier to form the words in his mind than to speak them out loud. Thinking of what he saw in the woman forced him to remember the previous - and mercifully, only - time he’d known someone like her. Eventually, though, he managed. “I met someone with eyes like that, before.” He could feel the pain of the memory in his suddenly-tense shoulders, in the jerk of his arm, in how his gaze was suddenly on the floor rather than on his friend. He hoped that Jethro would perceive it and interpret it correctly, saving Ducky from having to expand.

There was a slight, barely perceptible pause, and then Jethro said, in a tone of voice that Ducky appreciated even if he hoped to never be its subject again: “Ah, hell, Duck.”

Ducky made himself look at Jethro in time to see the man upend another jar and pour two fingers of bourbon into it before offering it to Ducky.

Ducky closed his fingers around the jar wordlessly.

“This’ll be over soon, one way or another.”

Ducky sighed again. “Yes,” he said, “that’s what worries me.”

 

* * *

 

_Wednesday, September 16_

 

The line of sight from the elevator door of the MCRT floor was not one of Yael’s favorite things. DiNozzo’s unmanned desk came into view first, and then McGee’s; she could see the twin paper cups that meant he was having coffee with his sugar, but nothing to suggest actual food. She noted the silence from Yates’ desk at about the same time: the woman wasn’t in just yet. Gibbs was at his desk, though judging by his posture, muscle tone and the way his head snapped towards her, he would not be staying there long.

Took him long enough. She’d expected the confrontation the afternoon of the day before. She sipped on her coffee as she walked to her desk. It was still too hot, but it would be too cold by the next chance she’d get.

“Morning,” she said as she passed McGee’s desk.

“Morning,” he replied absentmindedly, attention locked on his work.

“Anything new?” she asked as she dumped her bag at her desk, ignoring Gibbs’ attempt to bore holes into her back with his eyes.

“Nothing,” he said.

She pushed the computer mouse as she sat down, still working on that coffee.

“Dunski, my office. Now,” Gibbs barked, standing up from his desk.

That was more petty than expected. She adjusted her assessment of him accordingly as she got up, left the coffee on the desk and fell in step with him, walking towards the elevator.

Gibbs punched viciously at what appeared to be a random floor number before the elevator doors closed on them, and then hit the emergency stop switch as soon as the elevator started moving.

She placed herself with her back to the elevator’s rear wall, near the opposite corner from where Gibbs was standing, still by the control panel. He’d have room enough to maneuver from her front and left. By the time he turned around from the control panel, she’d already relaxed into posture: feet at shoulder-width, knees straight but unlocked, gaze focused straight ahead. She’d left her arms to the side of her body rather than clasp them behind her back, but it should still provide Gibbs with the sense of control he needed for this conversation to truly remain under control.

He crossed half the elevator in two strides, cutting the distance between them but not trying to crowd her or get in her face just yet. His shoulders were pitched high, weight balanced on the balls of his feet. The visible signs of anger made it above his neckline, too. Display, or too agitated to care? His established pattern of behavior made it impossible to tell just yet.

“You want to tell me what the hell is going on, Dunski?” he demanded, voice rising a little above what was acceptable for polite conversation.

“Nothing new that I’m aware of.”

“I didn’t ask for what was _new_.” There was more than the hint of a snarl in that last word.

He was going full-helm with the back-to-square-one tactic, then. Well. Making sure to stick to Ziva’s speech patterns, she replied: “I know nothing that you do not.” She paused for a split-second, and amended: “Nothing case-relevant, that is.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped. “You’re David’s handler.”

And that was why she was careful to not be lulled into complacency by his choice of tactics. The choice of pronouns was interesting, though. No surprise, no added tension in his jaw or around his eyes: the sentiment appeared to be genuine.

“A Shin-Beit officer, handling a Mossad operative?” She injected some incredulity into her voice for that, and then switched to a faint hint of distaste. “If that makes sense to you then you are significantly smarter than I am.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences.”

There was nothing helpful to reply to that, so she didn’t.

He took another step towards her, bringing him close enough to be threatening by virtue of that alone, even if the possibility of violence wasn’t written in each and every single line of his body. “You just happened to stumble into the other end of her assignment? That seem like a coincidence to you, Dunski?”

“It’s a small country. And a smaller intelligence community.”

“You walked into this office last week knowing damn well what Ziva’s involvement was in this mess. And you certainly weren’t flying in from Israel that morning.”

He was back to the first name, with Ziva. That was good; the instability wasn’t. “I never said I did.”

At this short a distance, and with his reflexes, she had no time at all to see it coming before his right fist hit the elevator wall just by her ear and stayed there as Gibbs all but trapped her between his body and the corner, looming in her face and from the side quite as if he was a gunnery sergeant again, and she an errant Marine. She wondered if he recognized the choreography; she wondered if he consciously noticed that she hadn’t flinched, and that her gaze stayed locked on.

“Cut the crap, Dunski. We both know what you are.”

“I am not her handler,” was the expected answer, which she fired off even as she analyzed his voice. It wasn’t wrong, quite, but it suggested that he meant something different. “If you want to hit me, Gibbs, go ahead.” The words were Ziva’s, but the tone of voice was hers, tiredness topped with derision and challenge. “I am not going anywhere.”

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

His voice dropped in volume, became softer, poison-like. _Ah._ So that’s what he was getting at. She let her next exhale carry that slight tremor, let the slight increase in tension settle into her posture. She kept her voice stable, for the time being, as she said: “I have no idea what you mean.”

“I know what my government calls people like you; what does yours?”

“The term was collections officer, last I checked.”

“Collecting _what?_ ”

“It’s the same job as your case officers.”

“My government doesn’t train people into torturers from the cradle.”

Someone must have informed him of her family; she filed it off for later. That was a minor point, though. She didn’t have to reach at all for the indignant fury as she turned her head to meet his gaze squarely. “I have never,” she spat, “caused more harm to a living thing than was absolutely necessary, and I have certainly _never_ caused harm for its own sake.”

"And you consider any harm that comes to Agent DiNozzo to be necessary?"

“I already told you,” she replied quietly, “that in my opinion there was no operational justification for his kidnapping.”

And finally, the rest of what he had to be feeling seemed to catch up with his anger. She could hear it in the rhythm of his breath, see it in the tension of his forehead and around his eyes. “You had damn well better be telling the truth, because if you’re not?” He leaned in as much as he still could, bringing their faces disturbingly close. “Any harm he comes to, I _will_ hold you responsible for. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she replied. Much like their exchange the day she walked into MCRT, this was a promise. “I do.”


	8. Middlemen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ball gets rolling when a package finally arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Continuity note.** The Dutchman appears in the NCIS: LA episode _LD 50_ (s01e14). David Chadad’s name and face appear on-screen for a split second in the same episode.

_Thursday, September 17_

 

Their fifth morning at Ziva's camp started much the same way that the previous days had. Daniel and he both got up at first light for their morning rituals: Daniel had his prayers, and Oren had his run. It was a right neck of the woods, this place that Ziva had found, but the kilometers upon kilometers of undisturbed woods made for good running terrain as well as camouflage.

It was dark and quiet when he left. By the time he got back it'd been full daylight for a while, and inside at the main floor the Rottweiler was barking at what appeared to be all of Ziva's wolf pack - certainly more of them than Oren had seen so far - as they unloaded crates. Some of them shot him sideways looks, but Oren ignored them.

They were still there and still loud when he came out of the shower, but at least it meant he had the kitchen to himself. He got lucky, too: there were leftover scrambled eggs still in the pan, coffee in the pot and they hadn't run out of fresh vegetables yet. He sliced himself some bread, made a salad and took his breakfast outside.

Ziva and Daniel were both out back, empty plates set to the side and a small pot on top of the portable gas stove. He smirked unrepentantly at their twin foul expressions.

"Traitor," Ziva said, even as Daniel announced: "Broken."

"How can you possibly drink that?" Ziva asked.

Oren shrugged as he sat down. "Had worse."

"I lived here for years and still I can't stand it."

He took a demonstrative gulp from his mug before replying: "Princess." He only didn't choke on his next mouthful because Ziva was predictable with those headslaps. "Get some new moves already."

"Would you like it if I pistol-whipped you in the mouth?"

Daniel mimed gagging. "Get a room, you two."

Ziva narrowed her eyes at him. "Perhaps I should pistol-whip you," she said, but it was obvious she didn't really mean it. "No touch, so that should not offend your religious sensitivities, yes?"

The kid eyerolled, and did not bother to reply.

Oren gave it a moment, and then remarked: "Lively, in there."

Ziva nodded. "Yes, it is."

"Haven't seen that many people around here, yet." He munched on the last of the bread, swallowed, and asked: "Anything going on?"

"Not yet."

"Stop with the fucking teasing, Ziva."

She gave him a lopsided smirk. "But I thought you like it when I tease."

It was his turn to give her a foul look.

"We're going to have an incoming tonight," she said.

Oren raised his eyebrows at her. "Our delivery?"

"Yes."

Daniel straightened. "About time."

Ziva smiled a thin, predatory smile. "Well, we have a very special mailman."

"Oh?"

"Ever heard of David Chadad?"

Daniel shook his head; it was Oren's turn to straighten suddenly as he demanded, "You're not serious."

"Yes, I am."

"He's supposed to be _dead._ "

She leaned back on her palms. "So am I."

"Who's he?" Daniel asked.

"He used to be Mossad," Oren said. "He'd been supposedly dead for the past five years."

"Instead he went rogue," Ziva said, "by the same scale on which I'm rogue, and for many of the same reasons. Except he didn't have the resources to go into business without backing."

"Who's his boss?" Oren asked.

Ziva grinned.

"His old boss," he amended.

"You're better off not knowing."

"Oh, come on."

She shook her head. "He's the biggest and the best," she said, "which is how Chadad had access to a crew good enough to get us the specimen."

Oren nodded, slowly. So that was why it took Chadad this long to get to them. A Big Boss like that wouldn't like any of his men leaving him, and certainly not someone of Chadad's caliber. That Chadad would even risk such a move testified to the promise that Benny and Ziva packed. Benny's connections inside Israel would keep Shin-Beit attention away, and Ziva's connections on the outside could get them the resources they needed.

Daniel made an impatient noise. "Tomorrow is New Year's Eve. We won't be able to leave before Monday," he said.

"All for the better," Ziva said. "And with Chadad here, it should be safe enough for you to go to your grandparents. You can spend the holiday with them, and we'll pick you up on Monday."

The kid's expression cleared as she spoke. He pushed himself to his feet as soon as she was done. "Great. I'll talk to you guys later."

Oren watched him until he was back indoors, and then turned to Ziva.

"You're carrying dead weight," he remarked.

"Damon's good at what he does, Oren."

"He is," he admitted, grudgingly. "I was talking about your pet downstairs."

She said nothing.

"It's personal, not business, isn't it?" he asked after a moment.

She shrugged. "I thought it was business. Turns out that it is not."

"Then why's he still alive?" he asked pointedly.

"Because it's also personal."

He eyed her. Her expression was careful, guarded. Seriously personal, then. Too personal for him to even ask if she wanted to talk about it.

It took a moment for her jaw to relax again. "Don't worry," she said. "He'll be taken care of before we leave."

He offered her a half-smile and picked up both their plates. "Remind me to never piss you off."

"Just don't kill anyone I love," she said, "and I promise I'll make it quick."

 

* * *

 

Her cell phone vibrated where it was clipped to her belt. The clip was padded and the room was full of humming computers; if she couldn't hear the soft buzz, then neither could anyone else. Yael glanced at her cup: it was empty enough.

She got up, stretched and picked said cup up as she walked around her desk. "Coffee?" she asked.

Gibbs, predictably, ignored her completely. Yates barely glanced up, but that seemed to have more to do with the phone conversation and pile of papers she was flipping through, to judge by her body language as she raised her hand and wriggled her finger 'no'. McGee, however, caught Yael's eye as she passed by his desk before shaking his head.

She shrugged at him and made her way to the break room. Once there, she placed her cup on the countertop, pulled the cell from its clip and flipped it open. The text message read: _the salmon will be coming upriver tomorrow._

Well. They were actually on schedule.

There was more than one possible way to proceed. She checked that the electric kettle had enough water in it and flipped the switch with her left even as with her right she toggled a new message, and typed: _the sharks should be right behind it._ She turned the tap on and put the cup under it while she waited for the message to be sent, and then flipped the phone shut and put it back in its clip before giving the cup a perfunctory wash and putting two heaped teaspoons of granulated coffee in it, reaching for the kettle just as the water was ready. She hoped they still had milk.

Her judgment had better be right.

 

* * *

 

Downstairs was the storage area, and it sure looked like it, what with the crates and the lingering shadows. Not as dusty as Oren had expected, though, but he'd forgotten to account for the climate. It was a place for things one wanted out of the way.

He could only guess who their prisoner was to Ziva. He hadn't even bothered asking around among the wolves; they knew Gisele, not Ziva. He could guess, though: someone from Ziva's life in this country, someone who could destroy her cover if left to roam free. Probably someone who was involved up to his neck in whatever mess had booted Ziva back to Israel. _Don't kill anyone I love_ could only be interpreted so many ways.

It was a fucking maze down there, which he really should've expected. Oren spent a good few minutes wandering around, trying to find one cell among the crates. Ziva must really want this one out of the way, hers and everyone else's. He'd get chewed out for this, for sure. It'd be over by the next week, though, and anyway, Oren was just going to talk.

There weren't too many women in their business, damn it, and Ziva David was one fine catch on any scale.

There, that could be it. Oren turned his head to the side, trying to get a better look. Yeah, that was definitely it.

The cell was about two and a half by two meters big, with the long side facing the hallway. The mesh offered a clear view inside: the standard-issue garbage bin by the far wall came into view first, and then the mattress parallel to the near one. Ziva's prisoner was sitting on that mattress, back to the wall, huddled in a blanket. Oren nearly blinked at the blanket: he hadn't expected it.

Really, he hadn't expected any holding cell owned by someone Mossad-trained to be quite so _neat._

The prisoner looked about as haggard as Oren had expected, though: pale, sunken eyes - probably bloodshot, though the light wasn't nearly that good and Oren couldn't get that close - and a little wild-looking, between the two-week beard and the kind of look people got about them after they've been in solitary long enough.

His eyes tracked Oren. His voice, when he spoke, was scratchy in a way that didn't seem to be purely about disuse. "The zoo doesn't open for another half an hour."

Yes, Oren had heard about the peanut incident. Stroke of genius on Zhenya's part, really, at least in regards to his sense of humor. Complete failure at not pissing off the boss, of course. Oren smiled, a little. "I didn't know zoo animals can talk."

"I'm just special like that."

"I'm sure you are," Oren replied solemnly.

"Why do you think I'm getting all this five-star treatment? Wouldn't want the main attraction to be unhappy." The forced cheer broke into bitterness on the second part.

Interesting.

"Now, who would do something like that?" Oren said, piling on the sarcasm.

"Why don't you ask your pals Dumb and Ugly?"

What - oh. Zhenya and the other guy. Perhaps Ziva _was_ keeping this one for the entertainment value.

"Not particularly fond of them," he said. He considered adding _Points for observation,_ but he hadn't brought treats and besides, this might violate Ziva's no-messing-with-toys rule too much.

"Oh, well, in that case..." The prisoner trailed off. His gaze skittered around. He didn't seem particularly distressed. Just lost for words, probably, and weirdly still. Solitary would do that all on its own, even disregarding the fucked-up biorhythm and partial starvation.

Oren leaned against the wire with his one shoulder, trying to appear nonchalant. "Zookeeper forgot to put a name card on the wall."

He made a soft noise that might have been a snort of amusement. "The name _Anthony DiNozzo_ would probably be stricken from the English language if she had her way."

First and last name, and Oren didn't even have to show any teeth yet. "Elephant memory," he agreed. "And just as nasty to be in the way of."

"I wouldn't let her hear you comparing her to an elephant, if I were you."

Oren smiled again, less benignly than before. "Called her worse. Still here."

A shadow passed across DiNozzo's face, and he nearly winced. That hurt, apparently. "And with all your limbs intact? I'm impressed." Bitterness, again, but a different shade of it, and one that DiNozzo tried to conceal, succeeding more than Oren would've thought him capable of. _Envy._

Oren adjusted his initial assessment of DiNozzo's state. Ziva had left as many bruises as he thought, she just hadn't left them on the outside. Plus, DiNozzo could apparently out-act a cheating girlfriend.

"Gotta know how to talk to her," Oren said, feigning disinterest. Cheap shot, but still fun. "I wouldn't get too settled in, in your place."

Another soft snort. "She moved on pretty quickly. I figured she'd have given it at least six months. Or that year and a day thing."

Was DiNozzo an ex-lover, or Ziva's lover's killer? Either way what he implied was flattering, but not the path Oren was trying to lead DiNozzo down. "I meant here," he said, pressing his hand against the wire. "No, actually," he continued, shifting his tone and frowning, making it seem as if he just changed his mind, "get comfortable while you can."

DiNozzo's face pinched in concentration. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

It was so easy it couldn't be anything but fun. He could say something else ominous, but... He pushed himself from the wall, pretending to shrug uncomfortably and avert his gaze. "Never mind. Forget I said anything."

DiNozzo tried to get to his feet, but seemed unable to sort out his limbs. It would be hilarious when he fell flat on his face, but his obvious panic was more than satisfying enough. Still, Oren had no reason to not throw in a parting shot. "Nice meeting you," he tossed, offhand, and walked away.

 

* * *

 

 _Last night,_ Damon reminded himself as he walked down the hall, bag of supplies in one hand. _This is the last time._ One last night, and he'd be rid of this place and free of these duties. It was almost over.

The thin comfort lasted only until he made it to DiNozzo's cell and found the man curled up with his back to the corner of the room. Four days after Damon had taken it up with Ziva, DiNozzo was still unlikely to move around much, but he was very definitely getting better. This was wrong. Damon frowned as he unlocked the door.

"Hey," he called out, trying to not speak too loudly, "DiNozzo, you awake?"

Apparently not, because there was no response. DiNozzo did stir as Damon stepped in, leaving the door closed but unlocked behind him. He didn't speak, though. He coughed.

That cough was wrong, wrong like an open wound or the angle of a broken limb. It sounded too much like someone trying to cough water out of their lungs, but it was still off: stickier, weaker. Like whatever was in DiNozzo's lungs was thicker than water, and wouldn't come out. Damon dropped the bag on the concrete and knelt next to DiNozzo.

"Come on, man, you should drink something," he tried to say, but he only got halfway through. DiNozzo's skin, where he touched it to sit the guy up, was sweaty and feverish. His eyes fluttered open as Damon pushed him up, but his gaze was definitely unfocused, eyes too bright with the fever. His lips moved, a little, but all that came out was another too-wrong cough, wet and pathetic.

"Fuck," Damon swore as he reached for one of the Gatorade bottles. So much for a solid dinner. He would have to skip the Ensure, too - DiNozzo looked like even the Gatorade might not stay down. Fever, lungs full of something thicker than water, cough. Damon could do the math of what that summed up to.

DiNozzo was running out of time, fast.

 

* * *

 

_Friday, September 18_

 

The case was a complete nightmare. No: Abby had had nightmares that were not this awful. She could think of several nightmares that were not nearly this awful. None of them had even had the chance to begin recovering from losing Ziva when Tony went missing. The first few days were more-or-less manageable, but then they hit a brick wall. That was when Vance had called in Cassie, who saw what none of the team was willing to see: Ziva, in that photo, next to Werth.

Since then, nothing.

Oh, she and Tim narrowed their way through the list of potential hideouts, but there were far too many remote abandoned buildings in the metro area, and hiding from visual and IR surveillance was all too easy if one knew what they were doing, like Ziva did. All of their contacts came up dry, too. It smacked of conspiracy, but that didn't surprise Abby at all. She'd hacked into Mossad, she and Tim had. They did not take Eli David at his word. Mossad's computer files claimed that Ziva had been on her way to Somalia, that Ziva had _died,_ and that was clearly untrue. Even the Brown Widow of a Shin-Beit agent knew that.

Everything was wrong. Everything was so horribly, terribly wrong that the _Y. pestis_ was their best hope. It was exotic. It was little-known. And Ziva couldn't pull the heist off by herself. For the past three - nearly four - days, Abby had been scrounging every semi-related database on the planet, first assembling a list of anyone who could possibly be involved in this based on skill and reputation alone, and then narrowing it down with Tim's help. She'd set the final search the night before and fell asleep at her bench, but it was still running when she woke up.

It was ten in the morning, and it was still -

\- the computer beeped. Abby's head shot up from her hands. She stared at the screen. They had it. They had _them._

She reached for the phone and the computer mouse simultaneously, dumping the files into the network drive she shared with McGee even as she dialed his extension number. "I got it!" she told him. "I'll be right up!" Folder shared, she hung up and ran to the elevator.

The squad room she ran into moments later had no Gibbs, but the files were already displayed on the plasma and Cassie and Dunski were both standing next to McGee's desk. Abby pushed through them, bending down to give McGee a brief hug. The angle was awkward, but his hands tightened on her forearms for a moment.

Then Gibbs walked in, coffee in hand. "What have you got?" he demanded.

"Gibbs!" Abby exclaimed. She pushed past Cassie and Dunski again and ran towards him, reaching up to hug him, too, and taking extra care to not spill his coffee. She turned to the plasma before he could make another gruff demand for information. "We did it, Gibbs! We found the connection! We were looking for big, bad weapons dealers and all of their known associates, right?" The words tumbled out, easy and quick. Her eyes were on the too-many photos on the plasma; she could feel everyone's eyes on her, though. She barely noticed when McGee tossed her the remote, but that wasn't the only reason it nearly slipped through her fingers. Her hands were shaking, though she wasn't sure if it was the excitement from catching a break or something else.

"So it turns out there are way too many weapons dealers in this world," she continued, "and I wish I had brain-bleach so I could erase all of the awful things they're involved in from my mind, but, anyway. McGee and I narrowed it down to just a few of the really, really, _really_ big guys, the ones nobody knows nearly enough about, and then worked our way back out through all their associates, known, hypothetical and most likely fictional. And we got one guy that's - " She took a deep breath, thinking she was just out of air, but the rest of the words got stuck in her throat.

McGee must have realized it, because he toggled the display from his computer and took over. "Meet David Chadad," he said, "formerly of Mossad and officially dead for the last five years. He is believed to be an associate of a dealer known by nearly three dozen names. His file calls him the Dutchman, and he's been known both to work bioweapons, and to get his hands on some seriously classified research. About a week ago, there was a small spike in chatter related to the Dutchman. Several of his more low-order associates disappeared and are presumed dead. They were last seen in the San Francisco area, which is where the _Y. pestis_ was stolen from. The chatter didn't quite return to normal since, which suggests that the Dutchman has set his sights on _something._ "

"Something like what?" Gibbs demanded sharply.

"Something like one of his underlings using one of his teams for a heist he didn't order and then taking off with the prize," said Dunski. "Chadad's been on the Wanted list for the past three years. He went rogue for ideological, not monetary reasons. He never had the resources to be an independent or the strategic thinking to get there, but if he got wind that Benny Shema is setting something up," she shook her head, "he wouldn't be able to resist."

"Which brings us back to Ziva," Abby said, her voice finally coming unstuck as she turned to face Gibbs.

"Chadad is going to her," Cassie agreed, "but he's been hiding for several years, and he has to know that the Dutchman would be coming for him. He's not going to be easy to find."

Abby wasn't quite listening, though. The elevator doors had opened while Cassie was talking. Abby would have hardly noticed, even directly facing the elevator as she was, except that the man who walked out of the elevator, accompanied by a security guard, was entirely too familiar and for all the wrong reasons.

"Gibbs!" It was nearly a scream, but she didn't care. "It's him!"

Gibbs turned around, automatically reaching for his gun.

Standing by the elevator, looking slightly confused and smiling apologetically, was Damon Werth.


	9. Flashpoint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Understanding’ does not necessarily follow ‘knowing’, Team Gibbs discovers.

Abby's face turned white, her eyes suddenly large. "Gibbs!" she shrieked, raising her hand to point. "It's him!"

His gun was there when he reached for it; luckily he'd just returned with his coffee and hadn't secured it in his desk yet. Standing by the elevator, accompanied by a clearly useless security guard, was Werth.

Werth raised his arms, promptly but not moving so fast as to get himself shot. "I'm here to help, Agent Gibbs," he said. "I have information for you."

Gibbs didn't lower his weapon. "McGee," he snapped, jerking his head towards Werth. McGee took his sweet time hesitating, but eventually did as instructed and stepped forward to cuff Werth. Werth didn't resist, though the look he gave Gibbs put his teeth on edge. Werth was the suspect, here.

He slipped his weapon back into its holster, draining his cup of coffee as McGee led Werth towards interrogation, Cassie close at their heels. He would let Werth stew for a few minutes before heading in to find out what the hell was going on.

In the meantime, he turned to Abby. "Good work, Abs."

Abby was still pale and wide-eyed, but some of her earlier excitement had returned. "Will he tell us where Tony is? He has to know, Gibbs."

"I know, Abby," he said. "He'll talk." He made sure his tone implied, _one way or the other._

Abby nodded, tight-lipped. "Good. I'll be in my lab, when you need me," she said, and left.

Which left him with Dunski. Rather than remain standing by McGee's desk, implicitly removing herself from the situation, she came and stood by his shoulder, just half a step behind him. She's been doing things like that since their little _chat_ three days before.

Apparently she was going to play shadow. He didn't bother to try and hide a scowl as he headed towards interrogation, stopping short to go into observation. McGee and Cassie were there, of course, with Werth sitting on the other side of the glass patiently. It didn't tell him anything he didn't already know, so he turned on his heel and headed into interrogation.

Dunski, mercifully, didn't try to follow.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs slammed the door behind him as he entered interrogation, which was about as unsurprising as Werth not responding to the sudden, loud noise.

Gibbs dropped into the chair, all restless energy. "Start talking," he said shortly.

Werth leaned forward slightly. Honesty, engagement; a plea for trust. Yael knew the history between those too. "Ziva sent me."

Straight to the point, wasn't he.

Gibbs shoulders tensed minutely. However, his flat tone did not waver as he asked, "What do you mean, she sent you?"

"It was part of the plan."

" _What_ plan?"

And as if it was completely obvious, Werth said, "The plan to stop the Israeli terrorists."

McGee's and Yates' stares prickled on her skin. Gibbs turned out to glare at her through the glass for a long moment before he turned back around to continue the interview.

"Keep talking," he said. His voice changed its quality and turned predatory.

"She infiltrated their group," Werth said, "promised to use her Gisele cover to get them some sort of weapon. Now everybody who works for Gisele and her Israeli contacts are at the same place, and none of them are going anywhere until Monday morning."

Gibbs would be working out the math, Yael knew. ‘The plan' was to ‘stop the Israeli terrorists,' and that was Yael's prerogative; he would presume that Ziva was loaned out for this operation. The questions that followed were how a former US Marine became involved, and why did said Marine come to report to Gibbs.

"And what's your part in this mess?"

Werth's reaction was complex. He made an effort to sit straighter but his shoulders were decidedly stiff - pinched, if one had a good enough eye - and that was shame on his face, not stubborn pride. "I... got into some trouble. I didn't have too much luck finding work. She - I mean _Gisele_ \- took out the last man I worked for. She decided to trust me." The last part was said with a small shrug. It did not take an expert to read the disavowal in the gesture, the lack of confidence: _I don't know why she chose me._ And its corollary, in the minute adjustment of Werth's shoulders, the smoothed-out frown: _but I am not letting her down._

Gibbs' voice turned flat again. No: almost disdainful. "And now you want me to trust you."

Shoulders hunched in, comparatively, but kept straight, with the chin tucked up: submission and defiance in one. "I'm not lying to you, Gibbs. I've got no reason to lie."

Gibbs said nothing and moved not at all; his glare, from this angle, was left to the imagination. He could do this for hours, Yael knew, and while Werth couldn't hope to out-stubborn him and would eventually roll over, she'd already seen enough to know that he would last a while. And she needed to know what orders to give.

She stepped back from the glass and towards the door.

 

* * *

 

Tim's instinctive reaction when Dunski turned to leave was a small spark of schadenfreude. Gibbs absolutely hated to be interrupted in interrogation, even on his good days and even when it was absolutely justified. This was neither, and Tim couldn't help but look forward - at least a little - to the epic ass-chewing Dunski was about to receive.

She didn't even bother to knock before opening the door, though at least she had the sense to not turn around to close the door. If that was her purpose: she seemed to be considering Werth, not Gibbs, which really wasn't the smart choice considering the death glare Gibbs was levelling at her.

"Tears are small," she said, stepping closer to Werth.

For a split-second it seemed nonsensical, and then a shiver ran down his spine. _Remember you promised not to cry/Because tears are small, and it's a very big sky._ It was the refrain of the song Ziva had sent them all before she fell out of contact.

The chair got pushed back and rattled, nearly toppling over, as Gibbs pulled himself up to a standing position and drew on his full height, towering over Dunski. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

_Here comes the ass-chewing,_ Tim thought, but his thrill was short-lived. Dunski didn't shrink back, like most people would have done, or even go blank and empty-seeming, the way she was prone to do. She didn't even draw herself up in any noticeable way. Instead, it was as if some cloak had been thrown back, or as if a totally different person was standing there facing Gibbs. The ten inches he had on her meant nothing against the intensity Dunski was projecting, all of a sudden.

Back straight, but not in attention or defiance; shoulders solid, arms to the sides of her body; even the way her feet were splayed communicated calm and disconcertingly self-assured authority. The lines of her face drew in, losing the soft blankness and becoming something else. There was expression, there, but Tim couldn't read it. Gibbs' wrath crashed against it like waves against the rock.

"It's a very big sky," Damon said, making it almost a question. "You're Iris, right?"

Dunski's eyes did not leave Gibbs' face. Her voice, when she spoke, carried the same absolute _solidness_ as the rest of her. "Yes."

"You, shut up," Gibbs said, pointing at Damon. His eyes didn't leave Dunski's face either. "I want answers. Now."

 

* * *

 

"Werth, do you have a package?"

The cheek of the woman was unbelievable. "Outside," Gibbs ordered with a snarl. " _Now._ " His hand twitched with the desire to grab her by the arm and _drag_ her out, but she was still a woman - though a devil of a one - and he well remembered Ducky's warning. Anything he gave this one, anything at all, she would used against him with vengeance. And as much as he hated to think that, the last few days were proof that he might not see her coming.

She followed him out without a word, though. Once in the hallway he turned around, backing her up against the wall. She liked it cold; fine, he'd give her cold. "Talk," he ordered, casting his voice down to the cadences of the sniper, the embodiment of death.

Her voice matched his. "He should be carrying a package, which should contain the stolen vial."

Too little, too late. "You knew," he said, keeping his voice quiet and dangerous. "All this time, you knew just what was going on, you knew just where DiNozzo is. You could've stopped this, but you didn't."

"True. With one exception."

"Yeah? And what the hell would that be?"

"Kidnapping DiNozzo was _not_ part of the operation plan. There's an extraction scheduled for tonight, but I cannot give the order until I know whether the vial is secure or not. That vial needs to get to Sciuto."

"You could be lying."

"I don't lie about things that can be so easily verified. Call the FBI and ask; I'll give you the password. But first, that vial needs to get to Sciuto."

He stared at her for a moment longer, and then turned away and stepped back into the room.

Werth looked up at him.

"What's in the package?" he demanded.

"A vial of something nasty. That's all I know."

Gibbs held out his hand.

Werth pulled a padded envelope out of his jacket and handed it to him. It was bulky, but it weighed nothing in Gibbs' hand. It was probably just the vial and commercial amounts of bubble wrap, inside, but Gibbs wasn't about to find out himself, not if it really was the _Y. pestis_. He glanced up at the glass before stepping out again.

McGee met him in the hallway. He held his hand out for the envelope and took off with it without a word. Gibbs rounded on the damn woman again. "You," he spat at her. "With me."

 

* * *

 

Damon Werth had come to NCIS on his own. Gibbs would have quite the story to tell when he returned from interrogation, so Vance situated himself at the top of the stairs and settled in to wait. Scuttlebutt had to be working overtime, because Ducky Mallard showed up minutes later, idling in Team Gibbs' aisle. Vance nodded at him when Ducky glanced up and nodded but, otherwise, their wait was silent.

The first sign that something was wrong was Tim McGee, hurrying down the hall as if chased by the hounds of hell and holding a small padded envelope as if it might explode. The second was the fury radiating off of Gibbs when he strode into the squad room a moment later. The third was Officer Dunski by Gibbs' side, not looking even remotely benign and easy to overlook.

Something happened. Something that blew the hornets' nest wide open.

Gibbs glanced up on the way to his team's aisle, meeting Vance's eyes for a split-second, but that was all. He headed straight for his desk and grabbed the phone. Vance could only hear one side of the conversation, but it was enough to gather that Gibbs had called the FBI, who - upon being prompted by a pass phrase provided by Dunski - confirmed that one of their SWAT units was scheduled to launch an op that night.

Gibbs slammed the phone back into its cradle. That seemed like a good opportunity for Vance to intervene.

"Gibbs," he called out.

Gibbs looked up at him, glanced at Ducky, and then back at Dunski. The woman seemed utterly unaffected by the intensity of his hostility. "Stay," he ordered.

Dunski's smile was knowing, amused and entirely incongruous.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs hadn't told her to continue the interrogation. He also hadn't told her not to. Taking over someone else's subject without checking with them first was bad interrogation manners in general and often downright suicidal when that was Gibbs' subject one was taking over, but this was as far from normal circumstances as it got. Gibbs had left in a hurry and in a temper, and Cassie had the sneaking suspicion he'd be far more occupied with Dunski and that envelope than with the witness in the interrogation room. The witness who, chances were, knew more potentially helpful things and seemed willing - enthusiastic, really - to talk.

She agonized over the decision but, eventually, she left observation and headed into interrogation.

Werth's head snapped towards her as she entered. "Damon, right?" she said, taking the chair across from him.

Werth didn't seem particularly impressed by the friendly attitude. "Yeah," he said shortly. "You here to actually listen to what I've got to say, Agent...?"

_Cooperative_ really wasn't a strong enough word. "Yates," she told him. "And yes, I'm listening."

 

* * *

 

By the time Cassie Yates came all but running into the squad room, the situation had progressed well beyond uncomfortable and into the realm of the truly hostile. Being left to supervise Officer Dunski was uncomfortable. Very much so, despite the woman's odd behavior. Ducky would have expected her to ignore him or, alternatively, to poke and prod at his obvious weakness. Instead, she spoke while he was still struggling for an interview opener, volunteering information, an update on recent developments.

Jethro returned some fifteen minutes later, his mood not noticeably improved in any way. Standing next to him and Dunski, as he made demands and she resisted his authority, information a hostage in this exchange, could be quite described as being trapped between Scylla and Charybdis.

And then, naturally, it got worse.

Cassie hurried into the squad room, all but running, her eyes wide with shock and worry. "Gibbs," she said, "we've got a big problem."

Jethro rounded up on her, though he made sure to keep Dunski in his sights. "Now what?" he demanded.

"Werth gave me information about Tony's condition," Cassie replied. Her words first came as rushed as the rest of her manner, but then she paused. Her expression, when she glanced at Jethro, seemed more worried than frightened and the way she tensed spoke of some guilt. Her eyes went to Ducky himself, too, before she said: "He probably has pneumonia."

Tony, with his scarred lungs; with the toll his immune system must have taken from months of depression and too little sleep, and what unknown torment the last two weeks held for him. Ducky's breath caught. Jethro, next to him, froze.

As if it was just another tactical decision, Dunski asked: "Should I arrange for air-evac or would an ambulance suffice? The operation is a go at two in the morning."

It was the first Cassie heard of the operation, to judge by the way her eyes went even bigger and rounder.

Jethro rounded on Dunski, but Cassie spoke up again before he had the chance to say anything scathing. "That's not all, Boss. David used some interrogation drug on him."

Dunski's reaction was terrifying. No: the woman herself was. "She did _what?_ " she demanded. "La'azazel." She took a step forward, and then turned around and straight into Jethro before he could snap at her or stride away himself. "I'm going to question him," she said, and the flat authority in her voice was absolute. "And if you want the answers, you won't be in the way."

 

* * *

 

It was early afternoon by the time Yael was done with Werth and headed down to Autopsy. She doubted that Gibbs had truly become more professional, but he'd let her run her part of the interrogation and did not attempt to assign her an escort.

She would have thrown Gibbs out of the room if he'd attempted to interfere with her interrogation, but an escort might have been doing kindness unto Dr. Mallard.

The assistant scurried away at the sight of her, but she knew that was his regular manner rather than a response specific to her. Dr. Mallard was seated at his desk, and did not turn to see who it was; the sound of her steps could hardly be mistaken for anyone of Gibbs' team, though. His posture was slumped, dejected. Distressed, but in pain, not despaired.

She paused at four feet behind him. "Dr. Mallard," she said. Casting her voice into neutrality would be the opposite of helpful - it would only give him an empty canvas across which to imagine the worst - but she softened it as much as she thought he might believe.

"Officer Dunski," he replied. He kept his own voice monotone, but his posture didn't shift, and he did not turn around.

It would have been easier if there was a chair for her to sit on, but this room was not equipped with that in mind. "There are some things you may need to know."

He tensed at her words, but then straightened. His voice, when he spoke, was far too confident to be called merely _dignified_ and not dramatic enough to be described as _proud._ "There are many things I may need to know, though I am not sure how many of them I wish to find out from you." Only then did he swivel around in his chair to face her.

She looked anything but benign and she knew it, but she'd seen his reaction the first time they were introduced, and even before that she'd known that he would not look over her the way most everyone did, when she wanted them to.

"Regarding the interrogation cocktail and its after-effects," she said plainly.

He pursed his lips, making a small noise of disapproval.

"The drug cocktail includes Scopolamine, a THC analogue, amphetamines and glucose. It's balanced to prevent the cardiovascular side effects, but not the GI tract ones." It would be disrespectful to try and sugarcoat this in any way. "The standard dosage is calculated per kilogram mass of a healthy person, and adjusted for physical and mental state. She had three full doses, in case of an emergency. She told Werth that she'd used a partial dose, but that is all he knows. Considering DiNozzo's likely state at that point, anything above 30% of the standard dose would have been overdoing it." To be truthful, she added: "Though most would say 50%."

His expression became more and more pinched as she spoke. "Oh, dear," he said softly.

She nodded once in acknowledgement. "The aftercare he received should have restored his electrolyte balance. We have Werth to thank for that. It's the potential long-term effects that concern me." Pausing would be sugarcoating, too, so she didn't. "This cocktail attenuates the typical amnesic effects. It also enhances hypnotic susceptibility and conditioned learning. The latter typically takes several cycles to manifest. Considering DiNozzo's likely vulnerability and without knowing what dose he'd been given, some behavioral modification should be expected."

"Somehow, memory loss seems preferable," he said, with a noticeable amount of venom.

Yael happened to agree, but he would never believe her on that. "Yes," she confirmed quietly. "There is a different cocktail that may be used for memory reconsolidation, if the conditioning is specific enough. It's not particularly pleasant, but it's effective and does not have other cognitive side effects. It can be mixed up from standard hospital drugs. I can write it down for you."

"Thank you." It was honest, at the core of it, but the sarcasm was laid on thick.

The words _I don't consider it justified_ curled inside her mind like the fists she didn't clench. The doctor, like the rest of this team, focused on what she didn't stop rather than on her reasons for doing so. Still, she made the offer. "Anything else?"

"I think you've done quite enough."

She shrugged as she turned to leave. "The offer remains open."

 

* * *

 

It was dusk, and Tim was still at Abby's lab. He went down there bearing the envelope, and then just stayed. He ventured out a few times - mostly to bring more Caf-Pows and Nutter Butters or to go to the bathroom - but he hadn't dared up to the squad room. It was bad, Cassie said, and Gibbs had Tim's and the lab's numbers both. Abby's lab had Abby, Abby's art and - though he would never admit it out loud - Bert. Upstairs had Gibbs, Dunski and Vance.

Not that things were all right downstairs. Abby didn't even have her music on; there were rows upon rows of empty Caf-Pows lined up around the bench, which Tim tried hard not to count; and presently, Abby was glaring at the phone as if that would make Atlanta call any faster.

Tim could sympathise, though. DNA testing could be predictable almost to the minute, if one knew exactly what they were looking for - which, this time, they did. The CDC had kept them updated every step of the way through the day, and the final results were due any moment. Final if it really was Pandy's strain. Otherwise...

Tim tried to not think about the "otherwise."

The phone rang.

Abby lunged for it.

"Sciuto," she stated. "Uh huh. Uh huh. Yes!"

Tim's chest suddenly expanded.

"Thank you!" Abby said into the receiver, put it down and turned around to hug Tim. His arms went up automatically.

"It's the right plague!" she said, relieved. "And it was the right amount for what got stolen!"

He held her a little more tightly.

Clearly, that was when Gibbs' voice sounded out: "A little early for celebration, isn't it, McGee?"

Tim and Abby were three feet apart in a heartbeat. As if Gibbs alone wasn't enough, Dunski was there, too, and she was still giving off that aura that made Tim feel like taking cover under a desk.

"It's the right strain, Gibbs," Abby said. "And it's all of it that was stolen."

Gibbs nodded once, briefly. His fingers, where he clutched his coffee, became a little less deathly-white. Dunski turned aside, towards the wall, and her shoulders rose and fell in what was either a very deep breath or a sigh.

"Relieved, Officer Dunski?" Gibbs asked, an edge of challenge to his tone.

"Yes," she said, neutrally. She didn't turn around. "Having the vial delivered was planned as indication that she will be following Shimoni and his contacts, but..." It sounded like hesitation. It genuinely did. "She's been out of contact since she took him." She turned around, meeting Gibbs' eyes. "So yes, I'm relieved that I'm not required to execute my best friend."

Gibbs stared at her for a long moment, and then turned and walked out without a word. Tim didn't expect Dunski to leave before it was absolutely certain that Gibbs cleared the hallway, but he also didn't quite expect her to turn to Abby and him with a shrug that seemed to be mostly directed at herself. No one should be able to appear that distracted and that intense simultaneously, but at least it was slightly less disturbing than the undiluted intensity.

What he really didn't expect, and what was much more disturbing than anything else he had seen yet that day, was Abby's three quick steps across the lab before she enveloped Dunski in a hug. It took a second, but eventually Dunski's arms rose, resting lightly against Abby's back.

"Not that I don't appreciate your concern," she said, "but I was under the impression that you rather despise me."

"I do, but that doesn't mean you don't deserve a hug," Abby replied. "She's your friend, too."

Dunski sighed again and then carefully untangled the two of them. Rather than step back, though, she reached up to touch Abby's cheek. "We don't know why she took him," she said. Her voice was gentle and, if it was anyone else, Tim would say that she sounded sad. "I may yet have to."


	10. Tremors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team knows where to find Tony - but not what they’ll find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Israeli idiom moment.** Cypress trees are often planted in cemeteries. Idiomatically, “to go to the cypress trees” is to visit a cemetery; similarly, “to bury one’s heart under the cypress trees” is to bury a loved one.

Oren appreciated his privacy, but the same four walls got boring, after a while, and now he didn't even have Daniel to tease. That was why he gathered up his weapons, cleaning oils and flannel and found himself a corner with a nice view overlooking the main floor.

He was through oiling his knives and halfway through reassembling his primary when Ziva came over, tossing him something from a few meters away.

He caught it easily with his left hand: a Mars bar. "And a sweet new year to you, too," he said.

She raised the marshmallow chick she was holding in her right as if in a toast. "May we be head, rather than tail," she said, and bit its head off before leaning against the wall.

Oren smiled a little, almost despite himself. It felt like being a decade younger, a soldier spending his first serious holiday in uniform rather than with his family, twisting the traditions around with his buddies to fit what was available to them. He wasn't a kid, anymore, and neither was Ziva. They should be arguing with their significant other over whose parents to hold the holiday dinner with, or perhaps hosting their own already. Even being teased mercilessly and fretted at for still being single would have been more right than this.

He put the reassembled gun aside and tore open the candy bar wrapper instead of picking up the other gun. "Definitely better than the fish," he said. Ziva was difficult to read even when she didn't place herself in shadow. He made no attempt to hide his regard.

"You don't like fish?"

"Not holiday fish."

She laughed, and he smiled. This was better.

"Are you done?" she asked after a moment.

"Depends," he answered.

She couldn't possibly be hesitant, he thought, but then she said: "We should go out." She spread her arms. "It is New Year's Eve. What does the rest of it matter?"

_The rest of it_ was the awkwardness and the strange, secretive feel of celebrating a holiday no one else on the street would know of or twisting the patterns of tradition, but it wasn't just that. _The rest of it_ was everything that had to happen to put them on that floor on a Holiday Eve. How many years had Ziva been in the States? How many years since she'd had two parents to sit at the table with? How many times had he walked away in anger or frustration? And that wasn't all, either. They'd both left their hearts under the cypress trees.

It only took three heartbeats for the _rest of it_ to squeeze his throat and let go. "Sure," he said, reaching to bundle up the weapons. "I'll just need a moment to wash my hands and find clothes with no grease on them."

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, September 19_

 

At ten minutes to the final debrief, the rain was still falling with no sign of it slowing down any time soon. At least there was next to no wind, which meant one could stay dry by staying under the tarp - and Cassie and Tim, unlike most everyone else milling about the staging area, had no reason to leave the relative shelter. There were the sounds of boots squelching in the mud, SWAT personnel checking their equipment, the hum of the lights and, of course, the rain falling on trees, tarp and mud, but other than that things were quiet. Cassie hoped it would stay this way.

"I always hate waiting for these things to begin," Tim grumbled, clutching a styrofoam cup of coffee close for warmth.

"At least we get to stay out of the rain," Cassie offered. And it wasn't that cold, to be honest, or they'd be wearing something heavier than their NCIS field jackets.

"Yeah, I guess," Tim said. His tone was dubious, though, and he stared out into the darkness as he said it.

Cassie followed his gaze. There was nothing out there except trees, and, somewhere in the distance, a building hidden in the night. She'd always liked Tony, but she didn't have the same personal connection that Tim did. While she would have preferred being part of the action, she didn't mind sitting on the sidelines nearly as much as Tim. "Just think, one more hour, and we can find someplace warm and dry."

Tim didn't say anything. He might have, given another moment, but that was when Dunski disengaged from the cluster of four SWAT team leaders and came over. The all-blacks made her seem like one of the SWAT people at a first glance, but a second glance revealed that her clothes were not, in fact, uniform. Rain drops glistened on her fleece, indicating that she'd ventured outside the tarp at some point. She too clutched a coffee, holding it with two gloved hands. She was still intense - if not quite as much as she'd been in the interrogation room - and among all these armed men, she moved with a coiled efficiency that suggested she wasn't someone to run into in the dark, either.

"How're you doing?" she asked. It could be just another late night in the office, for all that her voice betrayed anything.

"Aside from being cold and wet?" Cassie asked in response.

Dunski huffed a little, as if laughing. "Good to know I'm not the only one."

Cassie offered a small grin. "Still, it could be worse."

Dunski's stare turned particularly flat. "This would be the height of winter as I know it," she said. Then her attention shifted to Tim. "McGee?"

The sudden warmth in the other woman's voice was unexpected. That Dunski was partial to Tim - or pretended to be - wasn't new, but this was far from the shades of lukewarm Cassie had gotten used to.

"Tony's out there," Tim said, voice lifeless, still staring into the darkness. "And he's sick."

Dunski considered him for a long moment. "Five minutes to go," she said eventually. Then she sipped from her coffee, making a disgusted face as she swallowed. "Fucking socks juice," she said, matter-of-factly.

Cassie blinked, and Tim finally turned to give Dunski an odd look. "Are you trying to say the coffee tastes like someone's gym socks?" he asked.

"What coffee?" she asked dryly. "This?" she raised her cup a little. "I'm only not asking if it isn't actually rat poison because no one has doubled over. Yet."

"Should've brought your own, Dunski," said Gibbs.

Cassie only didn't jump because she was used to him.

Dunski gave Gibbs' green paper cup another one of those flat stares. " _That_ is not coffee either."

"Hey," called out the Team 1 leader. Gibbs and Dunski both automatically turned.

And just like that, Cassie and Tim were standing alone again.

 

* * *

 

There were no lights outside the abandoned factory. It was a moonless night, and so it would have been dark even without the rain. As it was, though, the SWAT teams approaching from the four sides of the building did not have so much as starlight. Teams 3 and 4, assigned to cover the fire exits, were smaller than Teams 1 and 2, assigned to the main entrance and the truck bay.

There were usually four guards stationed outside, Werth had said, and SWAT's IR scanners confirmed. The first step of the tac plan called for taking out those guards without drawing attention.

The comm crackled quietly. "Team 4, clear. In position."

Hidden in the trees south of the building with half of Team 2, Gibbs kept his breath even.

"Team 1, clear."

"Team 2, clear."

And then silence, again. Team 3, who approached from the east, had the least cover. If anything was to go wrong at this stage, it would happen there.

Eventually, though, the comm crackled again: "Team 3, clear. In position."

"Team 1, moving in."

"Team 2, moving in."

They headed out of the trees at a light run, crossing the ten feet of dirt and then the twelve yards of old, cracked asphalt that led to the truck bay's doors. There they regrouped with the other half of the team, which had gotten the door in the meantime. Werth had brought them keys, too. The soft entrance was a definite advantage, as they expected another guard on the inside.

"Team 2, in position. Moving in."

"Team 1, holding position."

Team 1 would have no cover once on the inside, where there were also lights; it was Team 2's job to get that guard.

They filed through the door as quickly as possible, fanning out and taking cover between the cars. The sound of the rain echoed inside the cavernous space inside, but the guard might still hear the clearer sound from the open door, if he was close enough.

All eight SWAT agents and Gibbs were in within seconds and then it was waiting, again, for the guard to come near enough to one of them.

There: bulky figure, medium height, approaching from the west. At the middle of the formation, Gibbs watched as one agent and then another crept up behind the guard as he passed them.

He counted down seconds.

The guard was down.

"Team 2, clear."

"Team 1, moving in."

The stairs leading up were on the north side of the building, next to the main entrance. Team 1 was already inside and heading up by the time Team 2 crossed the floor. Once upstairs, they made their way to the series of once-offices that were now bedrooms. Half the SWAT force, including Gibbs and Dunski - who'd come in with Team 1 - fell back, covering the doors. The other half spread across, pulling out the flash-bangs.

This step required very careful timing.

Gibbs breathed carefully.

Three, two, one...

The sound of ten flash-bang grenades going off simultaneously rocked the floor, shaking the remaining, sleeping mercenaries from their sleep. The SWAT agents wore ear protection, were far more awake, way less shocked, better-armed and also outnumbered their targets.

Still, ten simultaneous flash-bangs made a hell of a racket. Gibbs' ears were still ringing with the explosion when that, too, was finally over with not a single shot fired. The SWAT agents lined up the cuffed mercenaries, leading them downstairs.

"Team 1 to Command, Teams 1 and 2 are clear."

"Command to Team 1, copy."

Dunski cut through the agents, nodding at the Team 1 leader. She waved at two of the agents and they fell into step behind her. Gibbs saw her reach up to toggle her comm. "Command, Dunski," she said as she and the two agents made it to the top of the stairs, where Gibbs was waiting. "Securing the lower level. Team Bravo cleared to enter."

Team Bravo was the medics and the staging crew.

"Command to Dunski, copy."

"Team Bravo, copy. Moving in."

The four of them made a brisk pace as they moved downstairs to the main floor, across it and then downstairs to the basement, but it still felt as if they were crawling. _Almost,_ Gibbs thought. _Almost. You'd better hang in there, DiNozzo._

Downstairs was a maze. If their intel was wrong and there were more mercs down here then they were in trouble. Werth had drawn them a map, which Gibbs had on him, but the hard copy was unnecessary. Both Dunski and he had committed the damn thing to memory down to the last crate.

He broke into a run when he could smell disinfectant over the dust, old construction and gun oil. Twenty paces, not more, and then he was struggling with the padlock, nearly tearing it out before he finally got the damn thing unlocked and threw the door to Tony's cell open.

The cell smelled of vomit, urine and stale sweat, under the disinfectant and the dust. A thin, crappy mattress had been pushed into the far right corner and there, sitting, chin dropped down to his chest and wrapped up in a blanket, was Tony.

 

* * *

 

Yael held up her hand to the SWAT agents in a _Stop_ motion and then, without turning around, used it to gesture sideways: _look out._ Someone needed to keep an eye and an ear out for the medics, and she'd give Gibbs at least this much privacy. The man's hands nearly shook as he undid the lock, and he crossed the two meters to the back wall in very nearly a run, again, before collapsing to his knees on the military mattress, flashlight pointed askew.

Yael remained by the now-open door, watching the cell and the hallway simultaneously. She turned her flashlight outwards, though, together with the SWAT agents', rather than into the cell.

Gibbs raised his hand - to check DiNozzo's vitals, to judge by that angle, but adjusted it to cradle the man's face following an unmistakable wheeze.

"Hey, DiNozzo, look at me," he said, voice rough with too much emotion. His other hand kept the flashlight steady, pointed at the wall.

The light was enough for her to make out that DiNozzo's eyes fluttered open, but not much more. It seemed to be DiNozzo's sole visible response; otherwise, he was collapsed as a broken doll left behind. The cough that followed was kitten-like, wet with pneumonia and weak with exhaustion.

"Ah, hell, DiNozzo," Gibbs said. He removed his field jacket, placing it gently over the other man. "We've been through this before. You are _not_ dying on my watch."

There was an entire history to unravel, there, in Gibbs' words, the rhythm and cadence of his voice, the way his whole body adjusted together with his adjustment of the jacket. Ziva had told her, and she'd read the file. She didn't need that foreknowledge to read Gibbs' worry in his voice, the care in his movement, or the deep-seated terror of a parent radiating from everything about him.

Foreknowledge meant she'd had time to profile and prepare, though. Gibbs' response matched her expectations, but DiNozzo's didn't. Two weeks of solitary had him leaning into Gibbs' touch, not flinching back from it, but the response seemed lacking. He shifted minutely, and the shadows amplified the movement, making the wealth of emotions in it easier to pick out. So much yearning, so much guilt in the tense twist of his back, in that tilt of his head. The guilt she'd expected in him, but the yearning implied reservation, suggested that he wanted to yield and yet didn't, couldn't.

This was not voluntary. _Holding back_ suggested more intent than DiNozzo - barely conscious and distinctly not lucid - was presently capable of. The possibility that sanctuary might exist had ceased to exist, for him. She's worked in the cold of the outer boundaries of human experience long enough to know.

It would be a while more before the medics would make it down there. She stood at the open door of the cell, keeping an eye out for the medics and watching over DiNozzo and Gibbs.

This, too, would need to be handled.

 

* * *

 

Oren's fingers curled loosely around the safety belt. The night was dark, the road was darker, water was still pouring from the sky like it was the height of winter, bringing mud and pebbles with it - and Ziva drove like she always did. Saying anything would only goad her to prove that she could drive ever faster and sharper and still not roll them into a ditch, so Oren shut up, tucked in his stomach and elbows, and consoled himself with the Explorer having better shock protection than a Samurai.

The line of the trees broke ahead, indicating that they were nearly back. It was difficult to make out anything in the shit weather, so he didn't realize anything was off until they were nearly at the door. Ziva must have realized it at the same time as she slammed down on the brakes, pumping the pedal and not trusting to the ABS as she swerved the car to the left and then back so that when she stopped they had good view of the door but were out of direct line of sight - direct line of _fire_ \- from it.

Someone had blasted the truck bay's door open.

Ziva and he exchanged a look and undid their seatbelts. He pulled out his gun, checking it; she turned around, pulling a case out from under the seat and re-arming herself with knives and a backup gun before checking her primary. He pulled out the vests while she did that, and only then - as armed and protected as they were going to be - they made their way across the asphalt.

Ziva took the lead, and Oren was not going to argue with that. It was easier for him to shoot around her than the other way around, and she had the better foot besides; it was easier to let her pick a route between the puddles and the holes in the asphalt while he kept an eye out.

It was dark inside. The soles of his shoes caught on something crunchy: probably glass from shot-out lamps, but it was too damn dark and the pounding of the rain drowned out everything else.

The vehicles were still there, and that gave them enough cover to get with their backs against the wall and start making their way around the floor, to the ascending stairs. The ground floor stretched before them, disturbingly open. Just because they couldn't see or hear anything didn't mean that there wasn't anyone hiding above them, just waiting to pick them out with a rifle. Ziva cleared a path through the rubble; Oren scanned across every potential perch he'd identified in the past week, on the lookout for any hint of movement.

There was none.

They made it to top landing and to the hallway of rooms when Ziva sniffed suddenly. She knelt down, put her fingers to the floor, and then stood up again and raised her hand for him to smell what she'd picked up.

Blood.

 

* * *

 

They fetched the emergency light from the room she'd used once the building could reasonably be declared safe. The staging was good. The amount of blood was appropriate and the spatter passed visual inspection; whoever had designed the scene also paid attention to a possible sequence of events and, at a glance, Ziva could piece together a sketch of the scenario. The staged scene would probably not stand up to forensic inspection, but it didn't need to.

There were no bodies, of course, but Oren's imagination would account for that.

"They didn't die here, or we'd be smelling more than blood," he said matter-of-factly, "but I don't think any of them could survive it. Except for Chadad," he added, a little more grimly. The spatter in that room was done differently, indicating a less-lethal injury.

"It would seem he didn't cover his tracks as well as he thought he did," she replied, businesslike as well.

"How bad is it?"

She shook her head. "Gisele is burnt."

"Chadad knew more than that," Oren countered.

"He knew of Benny and that your group exists." Her tone was short and snippy, but that was appropriate. "The Dutchman won't care for that."

Oren's expression tightened a little. "He also knew of you, Ziva."

"He knew what I was, how I was trained," she corrected. "He doesn't have so much as my last name."

Oren considered her for a moment more, and then snorted. "You professional paranoids."

Her smile was tight and sharp. "Us professional paranoids," she corrected. "We need to get out of here. They didn't pillage too thoroughly. Load the car, would you?"

He grabbed her by the wrist, hard, as she turned towards the stairs. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked harshly.

"Downstairs."

"We're not taking dead weight."

"No such intention."

"And if they didn't search past that little maze of yours?" he demanded.

That suggested that he had. Her jaw tightened. "Why do you think I'm going down there?"

He considered her for a long moment, and then relaxed his grip but did not let go just yet. "Let me," he offered, quietly.

"No need," she snarled, pulling her hand free.

Predictably, he moved to block her path. "Damn it, Ziva, it's different when you give a fuck. Even if it's hating the guy's guts."

"You would know," she said quietly, viciously.

A muscle jumped in his jaw.

"Do you know what he did?" she asked, still in the same tone of voice. Oren opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. "He tried to protect me."

It took Oren a moment but eventually he stepped out of her path. He stayed by her shoulder as they walked down to the main floor, but he did not try to follow her to the basement.

She wasn't entirely sure what she'd find there, anyway.

She should have known, Ziva realized as she finally came within view of the cell Tony had been in. The door had been left open, padlock broken; animal blood had been spilled and spattered here, too, the smearing suggesting that the body had been wrapped in something before transport, thus accounting for the lack of drag marks.

Yael always was meticulous with detail.

The mattress was soaked with blood. Ziva sunk to her knees in a more-or-less clean patch of concrete, breathing hard. Tony was hallucinating with fever when she'd checked up on him before leaving, again promising his death as atonement for her supposed one.

Or maybe he believed them both to be dead already. It was difficult to be sure.

They were still on plan. Two weeks out of touch or not, Yael was still there to intercept Ziva's message and launch the arrest and the cover. Another handler would've aborted the operation and possibly Ziva herself at the first sign of unpredictability, but Ziva had known Yael would opt to take the chance and hold on the clean-up. With another handler, though, Ziva would have argued to be allowed to deal with Tony herself. The railgun sting being very nearly compromised by an opportunistic killer out of left field could have been a point in her favor.

She hadn't even considered bringing it up with Yael, hadn't even told her of Tony shadowing her steps. This was Ziva's, a problem she would not let Yael solve for her.

She pressed her fist to her mouth, trying to force her breath into any semblance of order, trying to keep the bile away. She didn't understand Tony at all, as badly as she'd accused him of not understanding her. Gibbs would be out for her blood, she knew, no matter what past favors once tied them together. This far from Israel and from her father, the only thing standing between Gibbs and Ziva was Yael.

And Gibbs, at least, would be satisfied with putting a bullet in her head.


	11. Pomegranate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of the op, everyone need to get their feet back under them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Israeli idiom moment.** In Israeli mid-1990s to early 2000s slang, “Shiite” is synonymous with “a suicide”.
> 
> "Days of Awe" in this story refers to the Ten Days of Repentance usage. ([Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Awe).) Briefly: "It is held that, while judgment on each person is pronounced on Rosh Hashanah, it is not made absolute until Yom Kippur. The Ten Days are therefore an opportunity to mend one's ways in order to alter the judgment in one's favor." Hagar would like to note that the English word "repentance" is far too narrow to capture the essence of _teshuva_ and that she personally favors the literal translation of "The Terrible Days" over the idiomatic one.

## Arc Three: Days of Awe

To say that Abby hadn't missed Bethesda Hospital's Pulmonary Medicine department would be an understatement. Four and a half years later, though, that's where she was, pacing back and forth at a safe distance from the elevator and wringing her hands as she did so. A glance at the clock on the wall revealed that it had only been minutes since Dr. Pitt had gone up to the roof, but to her it seemed to be a small eternity. What was taking so long? Had something happened?

Ducky was standing farther from the elevators, nearer to the window. He was quiet, but the signs of distress were obvious if one knew where to look: he was slightly too pale, too stiff, and the way he held his clasped hands was a dead giveaway. Noticing her glance, he shook his head slightly: he had no idea, either.

The elevator doors swished open and Abby swiveled on the spot. Dr. Pitt and the two nurses came out of the elevator pushing a gurney and talking miles a second of medical lingo at each other. Gibbs emerged half a step behind them, looking as though someone had thrown him into a swimming pool without warning, and now he was soaking wet and pissed as hell.

It took her a too-long moment to realize that the person on the gurney was, in fact, Tony. The wrist that one of the nurses tucked back in was too skinny; his skin, where she could see it under the sheets and the scruff on his face, was not just too pale but ashen. The scruff and the oxygen mask covering the lower half of his face did nothing to hide the circles under his eyes, or the way his cheekbones jutted out. As she watched he coughed, or seemed to: his entire frame shook, but if he made a sound it was too faint for her to hear. He had to be unconscious, because his eyes remained closed.

She stood rooted to the spot, both her hands covering her mouth as tears streamed down her face, only minimally aware of Ducky placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

The gurney disappeared down the hallway. Rather than following, Gibbs came and stood with Ducky and her. Dripping water on the floor or not, he still seemed ready to spit fire.

"He's going to be okay, isn't he?" she asked.

"He's going to be fine, Abs," Gibbs replied, taking his ball cap off to shake water from it. "Tony's strong."

"He doesn't look strong, Gibbs," she said, wringing her hands some more. Her wrists ached, but it seemed nothing next to the pain she imagined Tony must be in. "He looks really sick."

"Anthony is in good hands, Abigail," Ducky said, gentle but firm. Then he fixed Gibbs with a look that had considerably more steel in it. "And you should take that wet coat off, Jethro, before you require Dr. Pitt's services as well."

 

* * *

 

They were fussing. Ducky was aware of that, even as Abby commandeered a blanket and he - the use of the nurses' break room. Jethro had mercifully and uncharacteristically submitted to their care with only minimal grievances. No: all three of them were doing the exact same thing, grasping for something - anything - to do, to make them feel useful and so ward them against the helplessness.

By the time Abby had found some dry clothes for Jethro to wear, and Ducky made some minimally acceptable excuse for tea, Tim and Cassie had arrived as well. Abby fell on Timothy's shoulders, crying; he pulled her close, unselfconsciously. Cassie, for her part, met Ducky's assessing gaze with one of her own.

Her eyes scanned their small group. "I'll go get us all some coffee," she said.

It was light outside - and Ducky had lost count of their many teas and coffees - before Dr. Pitt finally came down the hall. Ducky eyed his gait and posture carefully, looking for clues. His steps lost their sweep, but he sagged none at all.

Ducky and Jethro were first on their feet, but Abby was only a split-second behind.

"He's responding well to treatment," were the first words out of Dr. Pitt's mouth. "We have him on oxygen, fluids, antibiotics and mucolytics. The chest x-ray showed mild pneumonia. The bloodwork indicates that it's bacterial, and also that he's less malnourished than we feared. Mild pneumonia and slight malnutrition are not minor, considering Tony's medical history, and it's far too early to see any response from the antibiotics; considering the improvement in his blood oxygenation already, I'm cautiously optimistic." He paused, and added: "You can sit with him if you want. But I have to ask you, only one at a time."

Relief broke over Tim's expression. Cassie's shoulders sagged in relief. Abby stifled a sob. Gibbs nodded once, tiredly, muttered a "Thanks, Doc," and brushed past the physician and down the hall.

"Thank you," Ducky said, his voice slightly too thick. Dr. Pitt had not been with the Navy for a few years, now, but he'd effectively dropped everything and gotten on the first plane to Dulles when Ducky had called him the day before. Tony's medical history was too peculiar to risk with a new physician under these circumstances.

Pitt had to be thinking along the same lines, because a smile ghosted at the corner of his mouth before he said, "I'll keep you updated, but it will probably be a day before we see anything from the antibiotics."

Ducky nodded.

Pitt reached forward, putting his hand on Ducky's shoulder for a moment. "You should get some rest, all of you," he said. "He'll need you."

 

* * *

 

There was something to be said for American motels, and there was also something to be said for Mossad training and Ziva's over-preparedness. Six hours after having discovered the aftermath of a slaughter, Oren was making a late breakfast in the motel room's kitchen while Ziva set up a low-key warning system around the room. Outside it was overcast and windy, but at least it had stopped raining for the time being.

He turned off the stove and shoveled half of the scrambled eggs into each plate, next to the sliced bread and the small mound of cream cheese. No vegetables in the convenience store, and so no salad. "Breakfast," he called out as he put the plates on the table, next to the waiting cups of coffee.

"A minute," Ziva replied.

"Suit yourself," he informed her, and dragged his chair deliberately loudly as he sat down.

Unsurprisingly, she was there a second later. "Thanks," she said distractedly as she sat down as well, but then she took a sip from the coffee.

"It was Red Mug or drip," he told her before she could say anything. "Deal."

She gave him a nasty look, but downed a third of the coffee before putting the mug down and attacking her breakfast.

They both speed-vacced their breakfast. Ziva picked up both plates and took them to the sink, and Oren picked up the mugs and flipped on the electric kettle again.

"I'll need to call Benny as soon as it's Sunday sunset in Israel," he mentioned as he measured granulated coffee into the mugs.

"We," she said matter-of-factly.

"Got a plan?"

"Lay low today, call Benny tomorrow."

He leaned with his back against the Formica and crossed his arms. "Talk to me."

She didn't look at him.

"You going after him?" he asked, trying to keep his voice short of a demand.

She snorted. "Do I look like a Shiite?"

The kettle popped. Oren poured boiling water into the mugs, and then fetched the milk from the fridge. "I'll let you know," he said dryly.

 

* * *

 

The first thing that Tony noticed was that his chest didn't hurt quite so much as when he'd fallen asleep, and breathing was a lot easier. He took a moment to revel in the feeling before his brain caught up to the fact that there was something on his face, and an incessant beeping noise from somewhere off to his left. He wasn't cold, either, and the thin mattress had transformed into something a lot more comfortable.

What was going on?

He opened his eyes, then had to close them a moment later; it was _bright_ in the room. Something - someone - squeezed his right hand. He risked opening his eyes again, squinting to keep out as much of the light as possible. There was a vaguely human shaped blur next to him, too large to be Ziva.

"Werth?" he tried to ask, but his voice was muffled even to his own ears. His throat felt torn up on the inside. The cough was as muffled as his voice, and left him feeling exhausted. More exhausted.

"It's okay, Tony. You're safe."

That wasn't Damon, and it wasn't any of the others that were working for Ziva. Tony thought he recognized the voice, but it made no sense at all. He risked opening his eyes a little more. "Gibbs?"

"Yeah, it's me."

Tony stared, but the inside of his brain was still dark and muted. Gibbs was sitting next to him, holding his hand. He searched his memory, trying to figure out when Gibbs had arrived. There was something, but it was fuzzy - people talking, bright lights, and Gibbs, urging Tony to hang on. Wasn't that years ago?

"What're you..." Two words, and he had to stop to catch his breath before he could continue, coughing again. Pathetic. "Doing here?"

"What does it _look_ like I'm doing here, DiNozzo?" The words were typical Gibbs, but his voice was still too soft, too gentle. The hand that wasn't holding Tony's went to his forehead, brushing across it. "How're you feeling?"

His eyes slid shut. This had to be just another dream. Even on his most extreme Nice Gibbs days, this would have been abnormal. "S'nice dream, Boss," he finally found the breath to say. He was too tired to come up with words, really, but Gibbs' command overrode that, even in a dream.

"Not a dream, DiNozzo. We're at Bethesda Hospital. You're safe. It's all right." Pause. "It's all right, Tony."

It seemed a funny thing to say. Of course he was safe. When hadn't he been? "S'okay, Gibbs," he said. "Ziva wouldn't..." He paused, trying to match words with meanings. "S'okay," he repeated.

Gibbs' hand disappeared from his forehead. A second later it tapped the back of his head in a far too gentle, but still recognizable, head-slap.

"Hey, DiNozzo," Gibbs said, sounding a bit more like himself. "Look at me."

Tony opened his eyes, doing his best to focus on Gibbs.

"This is not a dream," he said. "You're at Bethesda Hospital. Today is Saturday, September 19th, 2009."

Tony blinked, trying to process what Gibbs was saying to him. The words made sense individually, but all strung together they meant nothing to him. Gibbs looked like he was waiting for some sort of response, so Tony offered him all he could think of. "Oh. Uh..."

"You went missing on Monday, September 7th. What's the last thing you remember?"

Tony searched back in his mind, trying to sort dream from reality. There was one thing that stood out firmly. "Ziva."

Gibbs' expression did a funny little dance, but his voice was still even as he asked: "Yeah? What about Ziva?"

He licked his lips, remembering the cool, creamy liquid and Ziva's warm hand on his cheek. "Chocolate."

Gibbs' face shifted, again, and it was a moment before he asked: "What's the last thing you remember before Ziva?"

Before Ziva? Tony struggled with the concept. Gibbs wouldn't be asking about memories from several years ago, would he? So he must mean more recently. He searched back from Ziva with the chocolate, Ziva with the needle, Ziva _alive_... That knowledge seemed suddenly very important. Gibbs didn't know, did he? "Ziva's alive, Boss," Tony said, struggling to sit up.

"Hey, DiNozzo, lay down." The words were accompanied by a hand on his shoulder, warm and heavy and uncompromising. "It's all right. I know. Lay down, Tony."

Tony relaxed. Gibbs already knew Ziva was alive. That was good. "She's here?"

"No."

"She okay?" Tony asked. The men she had working for her weren't exactly the best sort, and if she'd found a way to get Tony out of there, she was probably in trouble with them.

"Last I heard, yeah."

"Oh." If Gibbs said it was all right, then it was all right. Had to be all right, Tony told himself. "Good."

"Try and get some more sleep, Tony. You need to rest. I'll be right here, okay?"

Tony nodded, closing his eyes. Ziva was safe, and Gibbs was watching his six. Everything would be okay.

 

* * *

 

It went unspoken that the first night shift was Ducky's, just as it had gone unspoken that the very first shift was Jethro's. Dr. Pitt had already been up and active for close to 24 hours when Tony had been wheeled in that morning, and nighttime was when hospitals emptied of senior physicians and filled with residents whose primary goal was to make it safely through the night, they and their patients together. No, the first night shift was clearly Ducky's, and he'd timed his arrival early enough that he could debrief with the day staff before the end of their shift.

The elevator opened to the Pulmonary Medicine department's lobby. There was a woman sitting cross-legged on one of the chairs, elbows leaning on her knees and the fingers of her right hand in her hair as she spoke quietly on her cell. It took him a long second to realize that the woman was Officer Dunski. He hadn't expected her there, and the v-neck jumper changed her outline quite a bit, relative to the blazer jackets he'd seen her wear so far. More than that, though, her posture and body language were startlingly different.

He hadn't meant to slow and pause, but slow and pause his step he did. He was early, and this was too much of a surprise - too curious a puzzle - for Ducky to just walk by and ignore.

It had been two whole seconds since he'd stepped out of the elevator, perhaps three, and she still seemed unaware of his presence. Normally he'd write that off as part of her mind games, but - oh, it could all be an act, he knew, a trap to snare him in, but that didn't jive with what he'd seen of her. Dunski has been scrupulous in leaving him be, so far.

She spoke Hebrew. Her cell phone, he noted, was sleek and silver, not the black one she carried clipped to her belt. A nazar ornament dangled off it, catching and reflecting the light. Her voice was soft, noticeably fond and a little amused, and also quieter than the usual. He knew only a little Hebrew, pleasantries mostly, and so could only guess at the conversation's content.

The words with which she ended the conversation made him blink in surprise.

She pocketed the phone in the coat bundled on the seat next to her and then looked up at him, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear as she did so - her ponytail could use being reintroduced to a hairbrush. She smiled at him, a little, and if it was anyone else he'd judge it honest; her expression was as relaxed as the rest of her and distracted still, partially in her usual absent manner and partially in this novel unselfconsciousness. Yes, it was genuine, that smile, he decided, but it was not directed at him.

"Hi," she said. Her voice returned to its usual pitch, but it was still a little too soft, a little too fond.

"Officer Dunski," he replied, doing his best to maintain the neutral tone he'd deemed safest to use with her. He disliked her profession, but the woman herself had not yet given Ducky a reason to dislike her personally, and he prided himself on courtesy.

"No news whichever way," she said, voice regaining its usual cadences by the word but the rest of her still oddly human, "but ‘no news' is also a debrief."

His first thought was that she had to be quite distracted if she thought Ducky needed to know anything other than Tony's status, but no; she'd done something like that the day before, briefing Ducky unprompted when Gibbs had left them in the bullpen. This was becoming a pattern, and one Ducky was unsure how to interpret. "As they say, no news is good news," he replied.

"For now, yes," she agreed. She finally uncrossed her legs, placing her feet on the floor. The atypical distraction was fading, second by second, but still this was not the woman he'd seen around the office.

"It is rather late in Israel, is it not?" he asked, attempting at least a bit of small talk.

"It's midnight," she agreed, a small but unmistakable smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, "which I think you knew. Not a late bedtime, though I wouldn't say that to my little brother."

"Ah," Ducky replied. So that was a sibling, then, and not a boyfriend, on the receiving end of an _I love you._ "One often doesn't say such things to younger siblings."

Amusement gathered across her face, but it lacked the genuine quality of the past few minutes, and it was wiped away as quickly as it appeared. She seemed perfectly serious and not the least bit distracted as she said, very plainly, "I never trust that there'll be another chance."

Ducky didn't quite know how to respond to that. It was an understandable sentiment, given her line of work. He couldn't help but feel a little guilty wondering whether she was simply putting on another charade. "Of course."

Her focus sharpened, for a second, and then her entire demeanor smoothed into the familiar. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I'm sorry."

If she was anyone else, Ducky probably would have told her not to apologize. Instead, he simply nodded in acceptance, and said, "I should speak with the doctors before relieving Agent Gibbs for the night."

She nodded in return. "I'll be here on his way out."

 

* * *

 

_Sunday, September 20_

 

At eleven in the morning, Ziva set up the secure VoIP.

"Hello?" said Benny's voice over the laptop's speakers.

"It's Ziva," she said.

"And me," Oren added.

Their voices were neutral, but they were off-schedule. A split-second later, Benny asked mildly: "What happened?"

"Chadad's Dutch friend," Ziva said. There was some displeasure in her voice and more of it on her face, and Oren would hazard a guess that like him, she was seething on the inside.

"We have the package and some of the cargo," he said. His own voice came out in full operational calm. "We could go back for more of it, but I don't think it's worth the risk."

The Dutchman's people could still be watching. Probably were. Benny wouldn't need to be told that. There was another pause before he asked: "Daniel?"

"With Toybe's parents," Oren said.

Debriefed and with his stepson's safety guaranteed, Benny's voice took a brisker quality. "Ziva, do you have a backup identity?"

"I can get out of this country and into Egypt or Jordan," she said. "I wouldn't risk Ben Gurion yet. But I don't think that's the best idea."

Israel didn't have biometric passports yet - thankfully for them, though it also made the terrorists' lives easier - but Ben Gurion was easily the most secure civilian airfield in the world and one of the most secure border passes, and Ziva was supposed to be dead. She might be able to come in through Eilat or the Jordan Bridge, but she'll have to stay away from anywhere where she might be recognized or caught on the wrong camera. Israel was too small a place to hide in. The alternative, however, sat wrong with Oren.

"Gisele is dead. You need to come home, Ziva," Benny said firmly.

"And what use will I be, hiding out in the mountains of Hebron?" she retorted. "Training your boys? You don't need _me_ for that, Benny. A squad sergeant could do that."

"Even I can't get you a new legend, and you're too valuable to leave in the wind."

"I don't need a legend. All I need is a blank slate and some paint. The former, I already have."

Pause. Eventually, Benny said: "The longer you stay out, the more you make of it, the harder it will be to bring you in. By the time you want back, it may be impossible."

"Then we'll just have to win before then," Ziva replied flatly.

 

* * *

 

When Tony woke, the sun was coming in low through the window. He wasn't sure if it was rising or setting, not without knowing which direction the window in the hospital room was facing. He found that he didn't actually care. The room was quiet, other than the sounds of the various machines they had him hooked up to.

He turned his head to see who was sitting with him this time. Abby or Ducky would have said something already, so he expected Gibbs or McGee. Instead there was a woman in vaguely professional clothes, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. He didn't recognize her. Her hair was brown, so he wondered if she was one of the women they'd considered as a new team member - but no, she wasn't the type. She was far too plain, and her clothes were over-sized relative to those women's. She was concentrating on the newspaper resting on the knee she had pulled up onto the chair with her, pen hovering; if Gibbs didn't trust her to be with Tony she wouldn't be there, and she seemed confident enough to focus on a crossword instead of the door, unconcerned that Gibbs might come and find something wrong with her vigil.

A stranger. A trusted stranger. Tony watched her. It occurred to him, a moment later, that she could be _his_ replacement.

He was still trying to figure out how he felt about that when she raised her gaze and smiled. "Hey," she said. "Good evening."

"Who're you?" he asked. His throat was still sore from all the coughing, but at least his chest didn't feel like someone was sitting on it any more.

Her smile faded. She folded the newspaper and put it away, placed the pen neatly on top of it, and put both her feet properly on the ground before saying: "My name is Yael Dunski. I'm Ziva's handler."

Tony blinked automatically. That was entirely unexpected. Gibbs must _really_ trust her, to have left Tony alone with an Israeli. That Gibbs trusted this woman should have been important, but it mattered a whole lot less than this woman being Ziva's handler. Tony tried to push himself straighter. "Is she okay?"

"She's safe," said Dunski. "There's constant surveillance on her for this phase, so I'll know if that changes."

He couldn't think of anything to say except "Oh," but the thoughts raced in his head all of a sudden. Nobody had told him anything about Ziva, only that she wasn't there - he wasn't blind, he could see that - and that she was supposed to be safe. This, at least, explained why Ziva wasn't here, along with everyone else. She was still on an op, the same op that Tony had almost blown her cover on by being an idiot and chasing her around DC. She was probably safer without Tony weighing her down.

Dunski smiled a little. "I'd ask how you're doing, but I suspect that in itself would make you sick."

The words took a moment to parse, and then Tony just stared at her. Was she trying to make some sort of joke? He half expected her to give an over-exaggerated wink. "You're Israeli, right?" he asked dubiously.

She raised her eyebrows. "What, I'm Israeli so I'm not allowed to be polite?"

That made no sense at all. He tried to figure out where her manners came into this conversation and failed. "Didn't realize Israelis had a sense of humor."

"We do," she said, deadpan, "but usually we keep it in the closet, with our emotions and other shameful secrets."

He blinked again. Two jokes in two minutes. That must be a new record. He tried to come up with a witty reply to that, but they all kept slipping through his fingers. "Ah," he finally said, feeling lame even as he did so. He couldn't talk even when people were talking to him: useless. He didn't know why anyone was still bothering.

Dunski tucked one foot under her again and reached for the newspaper. "Help me with the crossword, would you? I don't even know why I try doing the damn thing."

Surprisingly, the words came. "Shouldn't do them in pen," he said.

"Forgot to pack a pencil," she retorted, swinging the empty tray table across Tony's lap and spreading the newspaper across it so they could both look at it.

"Could just read the clues out loud," he told her.

"Seems inefficient."

He huffed a small laugh. Only an Israeli would be concerned about the most efficient way to fill out a crossword puzzle with two people.

He didn't have a chance to reply before Cassie Yates entered the room. She looked surprised at first, then offered Tony a smile. "Hey, Tony. How're you feeling?"

Tony glanced towards Dunski. She caught his eye and smiled a little. Part of Tony wanted to make fake gagging noises, but Cassie was still standing near the door, waiting for a response. "Guess Gibbs called in the big guns," he said.

Cassie's grin grew. "It's only temporary, DiNozzo, don't worry." She shifted her gaze towards Dunski. "Thanks for covering for me. You don't have to stick around."

Dunski shrugged a little. "Actually, we just started on this crossword."

Cassie hesitated for a moment before sitting down in one of the other chairs near Tony's bed. "Feel free to kick her out whenever you're tired, Tony," Cassie told him.

Tony looked between the two women. Something was off. He was missing something, but he was tired and it couldn't be important and Cassie was still looking at him like he was supposed to say something, so he shrugged and said, "Sure."

Dunski pointed to the other side of the bed and told Cassie, tone casually friendly: "Room for one more whenever you want to."


	12. Old Skins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's rollercoaster of recovery begins, and everyone is along for the ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** single semi-graphical depiction of major violence (T-rated chapter)

_Monday, September 21_

 

The situation he walked into on Monday morning was not the same one he'd left the day before. All the reports he'd gotten from everyone indicated that Tony's physical condition was constantly improving; Abby and Ducky also quoted Tony's pulse, BP and blood-sat levels at him when they'd called, and everybody mentioned that each time Tony woke he was more lucid. The reports weren't all sunshine and roses, though, and while Gibbs expected to walk in and find Tony not looking like death warmed over, anymore, he was still expecting Tony to be on the opposite end of the spectrum from his usual talkative self.

He certainly hadn't expected to find Tony - in a wheelchair, so obviously headed somewhere - joking with Dr. Pitt.

Gibbs only caught the tail end of whatever the doctor just said, which ended with "your chest," and a beat later Tony replied, with a smile that was a little bit forced but still a valiant try: "Hope you catch the good side."

And Dr. Pitt replied, in all seriousness: "We wouldn't want the bad side on film."

Tony and Cassie both looked up at Gibbs when they noticed his presence. Cassie stood up. "Hey, Boss," she greeted him. Tony echoed the statement a moment later.

Still wearing the mask, Gibbs noted. No nasal cannula yet.

"Oxygen doping, DiNozzo?"

He half-expected an immediate, witty response, but Gibbs could almost see the effort it was taking Tony to come up with a reply. "The doc won't tell on me," Tony finally said.

"We were just heading down to Radiology," Dr. Pitt said. "Tony's blood sat has been looking good since yesterday evening, but I didn't want to chance it before the night."

"Yeah," Gibbs said. Good thinking on Pitt's part, but Gibbs hadn't expected otherwise. He considered Tony - who was making steady eye contact and was actively following what was going on, though his posture still seemed off - and Cassie - who was beginning to look like McGee had two days before - and told the doctor, "Well, don't hold up the line on my account."

Dr. Pitt gave Gibbs an assessing look cast deliberately above Tony's head. "We'll be back in twenty minutes," he promised, wheeling Tony outside. Tony's hand twitched, but that was all. Gibbs noted that.

He waited until he was sure they were clear of the room before he turned to give Cassie an assessing look of his own. "Taking up a new profession in miracles?"

"I wish I could take the credit for this, Gibbs," Cassie replied. She looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"Oh?" He asked, wondering what could possibly make her squirm this way.

"I let Dunski cover for me for about two minutes last night."

His good mood evaporated in a split second "You _what?_ "

"He was asleep and - "

"I thought I told you to keep her away from him," he cut her off. The last thing he needed was for Tony to be anywhere near that damn woman, especially when he was vulnerable.

"I shouldn't have done that, I know - "

"Damn right you shouldn't have - "

"But you should have seen that, Gibbs. Tim told me that Tony wasn't making eye contact, that he was barely talking at all, and I walk in and he's looking straight at me and they're doing the crossword."

 _I don't care if they were solving world hunger,_ he almost said, but he bit it back. What Cassie said was right, but, "She shouldn't be allowed anywhere near him, and I don't care how much honey she puts in that trap. I don't trust her."

"I don't trust her either, but that doesn't mean we can't use her."

That sounded familiar. He'd thought that, when the damn woman first walked into the bullpen. "Yeah, that's what she'd like you to think," he said, still angry. The "Don't you have a desk to return to?" came out a lot more tired.

The look she gave him spoke volumes, but she picked up her coat from the chair and walked out without another word.

 

* * *

 

They scheduled to meet at their usual coffee stand. Well, for a certain value of "scheduled" that accounted for Jethro Gibbs' verbosity, but Tobias Fornell was well-versed in translating from Gibbs to English. Said coffee stand being at the park two blocks down from the Hoover building, and knowing Gibbs' driving habits, Fornell hadn't expected to be the first there. Still - and again knowing Gibbs' driving - he just got two coffees and didn't bother settling in for what would be, he was certain, a very short wait.

Unsurprisingly, he was right.

"You look like hell," Fornell told Gibbs as he handed the man his coffee.

Gibbs took the coffee before he replied. "You're not winning any beauty pageants any time soon either, Tobias." He took a long sip of his coffee. "What've you got for me?"

"Not much," Fornell admitted and took a sip of his own coffee. They began to walk. "Shimoni and Singer made some phone calls today. They're trying to get your former liaison officer in touch with some of their contacts. Suspected home-grown terrorists, gun runners, that charming crowd. Seems to be working so far. I'm also taking names of everyone who's been lying to me about this these past weeks, but you're not interested in that." He took another sip. "I met that evil mastermind you warned me about. She was very... underwhelming."

Gibbs scowled. "That woman makes our ex-wife look like Mother Theresa."

Fornell's eyebrows shot up. "She hides it well."

"She's apparently been raised for it. Leon had some choice words about her," Gibbs said.

Well, that seemed a lot more serious. There was quite the gap between the person Gibbs' words had painted and the unassuming professional who'd shown up to debrief Fornell over the weekend. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, and asked, in a different tone of voice: "How's your boy doing, Jethro?"

Another sip of coffee. "Improving."

"Well, that's informative." Fornell didn't really expect a reply, so after a beat he continued: "I tried to get her to talk about that part of the op, how this fit into the operational plan. Didn't even get a ‘no comment'."

"That's because it wasn't part of the op," Gibbs said.

There was something odd about Gibbs' voice as he said that. "And you know this how?" Fornell asked.

Gibbs just shook his head.

"Either this was part of Dunski's master plan, or your girl went off-script just to get back at DiNozzo," Fornell pointed out. "It's your team, but I don't like either of these options."

"Ah, hell, Tobias, I'd rather believe the first one," Gibbs replied.

"But you don't," Fornell half-asked.

"Even she isn't that good."

 _Or you don't want to believe that she is,_ Fornell thought, but didn't say out loud. Gibbs would rather believe that someone he trusted would betray him and his own this way, than assign the blame to someone he evidently hated quite a bit. That, in itself, was enough to make Fornell worry.

"I'll keep you in the loop," he said.

Gibbs, predictably, just grunted.

 

* * *

 

Interestingly, Yates was not ignoring her flat-out. She was more distant then she'd been before but then, that was within what Yael had expected for post-raid. There was little doubt that had Gibbs been informed of Yael's presence and involvement the night before he would've vented his anger at Yates. Either Yates hadn't informed him, or she was the best professional on Gibbs' team.

Gibbs would come to the office, sooner or later. What work Yael had to do she could do from the MCRT bullpen, very much as she had for the ten days before, except without having to hide, now. There were other locations where Gibbs would have to eventually be, but neutral and least confrontational was preferable.

And eventually, Gibbs indeed stepped in. Yael watched him walk from the elevator to his desk: dressed for the weather, jacket collar upturned, clothes dry, holding a green paper cup of not-coffee. He ignored Yates as he passed by her desk and she made no attempt at all to get his attention, which suggested that he had indeed taken his anger out on her earlier that day. Yael herself was treated to a single murderous look before he sat down at his desk, demonstratively turning his chair so as to face as opposite from her as possible.

She gave it a few minutes - until his shoulders went down a nearly-imperceptible notch - and then got up and walked over to stand in front of him, if with the desk between them. He wouldn't hold a confrontation in the bullpen, and he couldn't out-stubborn her.

"We need to talk," she said evenly.

"I have nothing to say to you," he replied. His eyes remained fixed on the computer screen, though, his posture turned from stiff-but-natural to frozen and his voice was too chilly, under the dismissal. This was not about anger, then.

That made the situation easier to handle, in some ways, if more volatile. It also made the best choice for her next move glaringly obvious. "You said that you would hold me responsible."

That made for an instantaneous response. Gibbs nearly knocked his chair over as he stood up and walked around her, nearly flush against McGee's desk as he put as much distance between them as he could on his way to the elevator.

She fell in step behind him without a word, keeping to two steps behind until they were inside the elevator. He stood by the control panel, facing the door, which was his usual position. She opted to stand roughly parallel to him but nearer to the opposite wall.

Predictably, he punched in a random floor number, hit the emergency stop as soon as the elevator started moving and only moved again once it screeched to a halt. He crossed the distance between them in a single step, putting himself very much in her face, and snarled: "You damn well better believe I'm holding you responsible."

"If this is what's required for you to be able to hold a conversation, go ahead," she said quietly, "but if the purpose of this is to intimidate me, then you ought to know better, as you did call me a torturer to my face."

His pupils dilated and his nostrils flared, for a second, but he didn't budge. His breath changed, became rougher, shallower. Gibbs needed status like gravity, and he'd just conceded needing the comfort of his military persona this much. It followed that whatever he was protecting himself from was even worse.

"He doesn't talk enough and he avoids eye contact," she said, quietly but at a different pitch, one meant to slide under rather than to shake up. "You would've noticed that. You expected that. Either major depression or two weeks of solitary would do that. Even taken together it should not be enough to make him _not move._ " She'd meant to follow these two words with _Not even a twitch,_ but the shiver she got for them was too obvious.

The problem with _hard_ was that too often it implied _brittle,_ and Gibbs was too close to shattering. Still not quite there, though, as the clipped, low quality of his voice indicated: "You don't get to talk about him like you know the first thing about him."

"I don't need to know him any better than any other person I work with."

"You don't work with him."

It was a good thing that she'd had sufficient practice in keeping her demeanor inviting even in the face of relentless adversity. "If you do care about him more than your pride, reconsider that." She gave it a split-second, enough to confirm his reaction, and continued in a slightly different tone of voice, putting more steel in it: "This job is not about you or me, or any one of us. This happened on my watch, which makes it my responsibility whether or not you want to accept what that means."

"So which is it?" he nearly snarled. "Because I find it equally hard to believe that you give a damn what I think, or that you care at all."

"I don't give a damn what you think," she said, returning his serve in full. "I just need you to not crack on the job." That said, and the latter part being plain true, she stepped neatly around him and switched the elevator going again.

He didn't say a word, didn't try to stop her or interfere with her in any way, but he did turn around, keeping his eyes on her, face set in a scowl and hands clenched into fists at his side.

Perhaps it was supposed to communicate distrust and anger, but the underlying mindset Yael read in the sum total of his nonverbal cues was different.

Helplessness.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the world didn't go on hold as much as Abby would've liked for it to, which meant that Abby had to be at her lab during something like normal work hours, working evidence for all of NCIS. She would've much preferred to sit with Tony. Well, okay, Tony still wasn't really up to taking more than one visitor at a time yet and it would've been unfair to the others if she hogged all of Tony's time, but Abby still felt annoyed and a little - ridiculously - guilty, so in between the DNA and the material samples she made a few things for him - just a couple of banners - and she ordered a whole lot of helium balloons, and she passed through the store on the way to pick up Tony's favorite ice cream - both Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey, she wasn't sure what he'd like today - to celebrate that he was on the nasal cannula and not the mask, and some of the good probiotic yogurt because Tony was on so many antibiotics, and the organic whole apple juice too and, okay, maybe a few other things, and really, it hadn't occurred to her how many things she was carrying until she tried to walk into Tony's room and decided that hospital doorways were way too narrow.

That had been a few hours ago now; the juice was half gone, the yogurt was untouched, and Abby had convinced the duty nurse to put the ice cream in the freezer in the staff lounge so it wouldn't melt. He'd eaten a couple of bites of the Cherry Garcia, at least, which had left Abby with the Chunky Monkey. She had been worried that he didn't want more of the ice cream, but according to what Damon Werth had said, Tony hadn't really been eating much of anything for the last two weeks, so she could at least rationalize that. And since they had started with the ice cream, she wasn't terribly surprised when he didn't want to eat the yogurt. And Tony was so much better than he was just two days before, totally looking at her and talking and trying to be funny, and Abby was trying so hard to think about that and not about the pauses between his words, or the look on his face whenever he realized the same thing. Tony didn't need to worry about her worrying, though, so she covered it up with all the enthusiasm she could muster, accompanying her words with illustrative gestures.

"So then Sister Rosita bowled two strikes in a row, which was great, because her game had been off for the entire night, and it brought our team total up high enough to beat our rivals - they're Episcopalian preachers - so we managed to get the trophy, and when we went back to the convent after the game, Father Jeffrey was delighted, of course, and even made a joke about the Ecumenical Wine, but you know how much of a stuffy-duffy he can be, so it was definitely only a joke."

Tony was looking straight at her when she started talking about the game, and even smiled a little as she gave him the play-by-play. At some point, though, something became off. She would've written it off as tiredness - it was getting to be evening and they had been talking for a couple hours which was maybe more talking than he'd done during the whole day, as Gibbs had sat the morning with him - but that didn't feel quite right. It took her a few seconds to realize that Tony wasn't just looking away, he was eyeing the glasses on the tray table. His glass was about a third-full and totally within reach, but he didn't reach for it, didn't say anything, just _looked_ at the glass with an expression that, by the time Abby paused for breath, had turned to confused, somewhat helpless, frustration.

"Tony?" she asked.

It took him a second to look up at her. His expression shifted, the confusion winning over the frustration and touched with something that could be worry, or -

"What's wrong?" she asked. He was acting weird, weirder than he had been, and she could feel tears starting to prickle at her eyes.

He opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips, swallowed, and then tried again to speak. "The glass," he said. "I -"

And that was all: Tony just stuck in place, frozen, not another word and not moving at all, and Abby hadn't been wrong a second before - that _was_ fear on his face. And then she knew it was on her face, too, trickling down her spine as she realized that what Tony tried to say and couldn't was that he couldn't do this, couldn't reach for the glass even though it was right there.

She picked up his glass for him, quick, and she had to use both her hands because they were trembling, shaking, and so were Tony's hands as they closed around the glass and her hands both, as if the second she moved - the second she offered him the glass - the evil spell was broken and it was all right for him to accept it.

Their eyes met over their clasped hands, slow-building terror in his and - she thought - panicky outrage in hers.

 _What happened to you?_ she wanted to ask, but she had no idea if he could answer.

 

* * *

 

_Tuesday, September 22_

 

The room was dark, blinds drawn in against the glare from the motel parking lot. There was a table with a glass balanced on its edge pushed against the door, and alarm wires on every window. No one was coming, though: the Dutchman was not on to them, and law enforcement would give them a wide berth. Benny and his people did not know that, though, and so the next day - today, it had to be past midnight already - Ziva would be introduced to the Jewish Justice network, who in turn would introduce her to their suppliers; and because Ziva had a bug in her phone, the FBI would hear and record all of these conversation, all of this framing evidence.

 _Lies are hard to remember. Tell the truth as much as you can._ It was one of the first rules repeated to undercover operators. It was the reason Ziva was assigned to this op. _Tell the truth_ held doubly true when the target of the undercover sting was a retired Shin-Beit department chief, still connected inside the organization. Benny Shema did not let anyone in unless he thought he had something on them: his wife and her children, widowed from her first husband and their father by a roadside shooter; the hilltop youth, angry at a government that first sent their parents to the Settlements and then called them fanatics; Oren with his baggage; and Ziva with hers.

Eleven years and just over eleven months before, it was Sukot, it was a holiday, and Ziva and Tali braved the buses to Jerusalem on their own, to visit with their paternal grandparents. They were in the market, and the market - unlike malls - did not have walls and gates and guards. The market was no safer than the buses. Ziva had located Tali and pressed down on her wounds before she realized that a piece of wood torn by the explosion had ripped Tali's little girl body nearly in half; Tali was already dead, very dead. By the rules of triage - the rules of triage for mass casualties events of a terrorist nature - Ziva should have helped evacuate everyone who could still walk or be carried and only then risk herself with the potential second-wave bomb by tending to the wounded; and even then, she should have started with those who could be quickly stabilized and evacuated, not with the elderly woman with a hole in her thigh, but the woman was her grandmother and her sister was already dead.

Sometimes she could still feel Tali's blood on her hands, close to her skin, under her grandmother's. Sometimes, like lying awake in bed and staring in the direction of a ceiling that was invisible in the dark.

She pushed herself out of bed and went to wash her face, closing the bathroom door and not bothering with the light: enough of it filtered in through the window. She washed her hands first, first putting her left hand under the tap up to her elbow and then spilling water from it onto her right, and then from her right onto her left. Only then she brought her hands up to her face, the water first warm against her skin and then quickly chilled by the air.

The room she walked back into was still dark, but now with the stove on and Oren standing next to it, looking down at the pot. A glance at the clock revealed that it was past four in the morning; neither of them would go back to sleep. The room did not smell of coffee and, anyway, they did not have any coffee appropriate for boiling. They did, however, have lemon balm and spearmint, and as Ziva stepped closer she could detect the soft lemony scent of them and see the sugar Oren had waiting on the side, to be added only for the post-boiling simmer. Trail-tea, refreshing and sweet.

Oren shifted as she stood by him but said nothing, just glanced at her and then turned his gaze to the pot again. She could appreciate the effort it had to cost him: distance did not come easy to Israelis, and privacy was a distant concept.

She had never told Tony that. She had never told Tony that his nosey, pushy obnoxiousness was the most familiar thing for her at NCIS, a welcome respite from the utter foreignness of McGee's manners and Gibbs' rigidness. She hadn't taught Tony the word _dachka,_ had never told him about all the times she privately thought he could be happier among Israelis, who would not judge him for what he was, who would return his serves.

Her throat tightened at the thought but her fury spiked, too. Tony's welcoming front hid the same fucking stupid beliefs as Gibbs, except Gibbs knew to check himself before protectiveness became possessiveness, and let capable people handle themselves. Tony tied the noose around Michael's neck and Tony kicked away the chair, even if it was Ziva who failed to take the rope away, as Hadar suggested.

She still believed that, deep down to her bones. Michael had been drinking too much for too long, but he was only teetering on the edge; Tony provided the final push, even though he did not mean to, even though he was not acting out of explicit jealousy.

Oren moved - lowered the fire, stirred the tea before adding the sugar - and Ziva started at the movement. Because it was sudden, yes, but also because Oren's solid build and controlled, efficient motion were a sharp contrast to Tony limp and pliant by her side, staring up at her with a longing adoration that no person should give up to another.

Her throat stuck. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the scent of the tea instead - it smelled like school trips and childhood, like togetherness and belonging - but nearly all of those memories had Yael in them, and Ziva opened her eyes abruptly and turned to find two mugs before Oren could reach for them himself.

She held the mugs over the sink for him to pour the tea into. He did, and then turned to place the pot on the dark stove again. She held one mug out to him when he turned back around. His hands touched hers as he picked it up. That was all.

It was enough.


	13. Deliverance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prayer is, ultimately, for those who pray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** intense depictions of psychological debris including depression, PTSD and associated mindsets

The clink of the glass seemed startlingly loud in the dark house, but Abby - asleep on the couch not ten feet away from the kitchen - didn't react at all. Gibbs paused partway and considered her over the rim of the glass. She hadn't meant to stay the night, and so was wearing a fraying NIS shirt and a pair of sweats that was entirely too wide for her, if not too long. There was a perfectly good - if somewhat disused - guest room upstairs, but Abby said she preferred the couch and Gibbs refrained from mentioning how often he slept there himself, instead of in his own bed.

She'd showed up at eleven, straight from the hospital and so distraught that Gibbs had nearly called the hospital to demand answers instead of getting the story from her, except that it was Ducky's shift that night and Ducky _would_ have called him if anything urgent was the matter with Tony. So Gibbs held Abby and rubbed circles against her back and tried to reign in the too-many scenarios running through his head, until Abby calmed down enough to tell him what had happened.

"He just looked at the glass, Gibbs," she said. "He just sat there and looked at it and he couldn't even _tell me_ anything, just," and there her words broke into tears and hiccups again. "What happened, Gibbs?" she asked when she calmed down enough to talk again. "What happened to him? Because I read up on captivity and PTSD and all that and this is really really over the top, like - what did Ziva _do?_ "

Ziva had given Tony a truth serum of sorts, Werth had said; Dunski had told them what it was made of, and Ducky had confirmed what she'd said of its likely after-effects. Gibbs hadn't asked for more information than that, because the subject made Ducky's lips turn into thin white lines and Gibbs did not really want to push this topic unless they had to.

It seemed they had to. He noticed Tony being too still, but ascribed that to trauma and sickness on top of plain emotional exhaustion; Dunski had claimed there was more to it, and Abby confirmed that claim.

Gibbs downed half the bourbon in a gulp. This would be his last for the night, as it was morning more than night even if the sky was still dark.

The thought of the damn woman and that tone of voice of hers, that look on her face, made him clutch the glass too hard and so he made himself put it down and turn his attention to Abby instead. Her lashes were short and her cheeks rosy, without the makeup, and the darkness preserved the youthful illusion, for all that she was nearly Tony's age. They fit into the empty places in each other's lives easily, and if it didn't ease the pain then at least it stemmed the bleeding.

He picked up the glass and took another swallow without taking his eyes off of her. He'd been a father more than an agent these past few days, since Cassie had said _Tony has pneumonia._ In the dark quiet of his own home, with a safe sleeping child and the drink blanketing the shrapnel inside his head, Gibbs knew that he'd do better by his people by summoning up the agent over the father, anguish be damned.

That held for all of them, he thought ruefully as he took another swallow of the bourbon. He and Ducky needed to have this conversation, even if neither of them wanted to and even if - he suspected - they were both going to hate the conclusions.

With nothing to do but wait and drink and watch, Gibbs wouldn't mind if sunrise got going with it, already.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs hadn't even tried to talk since he arrived, which was fine by Tony. Ducky kept trying to get him to talk during the night, and Tony still had no words - which seemed to have become the normal state of him - and no idea how to explain the new development other than _Well, apparently I'm fucked up, but I think we already knew that._

He wondered whether he'd be able to stand up - if he wasn't so pathetically weak - but the thought gave him the same small, helpless feeling that trying to reach for the glass did, so probably not. At least he could still turn his head, so he could pretend to stare out the window instead of having to look at Gibbs, who was still pretending to not be disappointed to death with him.

Gibbs said something, a word, but Tony wasn't paying attention. The next second, though, someone else spoke, the flat inflection and short vowels of her Israeli accent getting through: "How much do you remember of being drugged?"

The bluntness of the question blindsided him, made him turn his head. Ziva's handler - what was her name? - stood by his bed, regarding him with an expression that was almost _amused._ Mocking seemed more likely, really. Behind her, sitting, Gibbs was most definitely frowning.

"What do you know about that?" he asked. At least he managed a full sentence, even if his voice still sounded like sandpaper.

She sat down. "That it happened," she said, matter-of-factly. "And what that drug is, and what it does." Her amusement disappeared so fast Tony wondered if it'd really been there. "And that Ziva forgets to think when she's angry."

She paused after that declaration. Tony opened his mouth, but it seemed all he could do was wet his lips.

"This drug makes thing stick," Ziva's handler continued, still factual. "Anything she did, anything she said, like ‘don't move'. That it got stuck is not your fault, just like whiplash when you get rear-ended." Her gaze sharpened. "This is what happened. And if you insist on thinking it's because you're weak, then your boss here should slap you upside the head."

"The woman's got a point, DiNozzo," Gibbs said, his tone dry.

_No,_ Tony nearly said, but that would get him head-slapped, and he was in no particular hurry to have that happen.

The woman's eyes were still sharp, intense, expression otherwise unreadable. Then she leaned forward abruptly. He didn't realize what was going on until she already had his hand between hers. The feeling was as odd as Abby's hands on his face, shaving him the day before, or her laying next to him on her first shift. He almost missed her turning his palm face-up, and caught up - sort of - when she pressed her thumb to it, rubbing lines. The pressure and the feel of her skin - dry, a little rough - went straight to his head. Her words barely registered through the feeling. "None of this is your fault. It's hard to believe because this is how you're injured, not because it's false."

He tried to come up with an acceptable answer but she was still massaging warmth into his palm and looking at him with spotlight eyes, and what tumbled out was: "What's your name, again?"

She smiled. It was an odd, slow kind of smile, and it didn't disturb the way her attention was locked on him even one bit.

"Yael," she said. "It's Yael."

 

* * *

 

Ducky's after-shift report that morning had been as gloomy as Abby's tales of the afternoon, once Tim remembered to compensate for the difference in delivery. It was hard to not let it get him down, but Tim reminded himself that it'd barely been four days, and that recovering from the kind of ordeal Tony had been through could easily be months even before one accounted for what Tony had been like over the summer.

Tony had not been planning on coming back from Somalia. He'd seemed almost relieved at the thought. Tim remembered that. He could deal with the warning of every trauma handbook and Ducky that Tony would probably never be quite the same, if it meant that Tony was going to live.

Or that was what Tim tried to tell himself as he walked across the hospital, laptop and DVDs in his backpack. Tim could lay out the movies he'd picked for Tony, and Tony could pick the one he wanted or push away the ones he didn't, and that was a way of talking to each other, too.

He'd prepared himself to find Tony in a state much like Sunday, and Gibbs scowling in the chair. Gibbs was indeed scowling when Tim stepped into Tony's room, but the expression was directed at the game of Taki spread over the tray table, and Tony was sitting in bed without support and seemed reasonably attentive to the game, though he - like Gibbs and, surprise upon surprise, Dunski - looked up at Tim's entrance.

"Uh, hi," Tim said, trying to not wince at the stammer.

Gibbs, typically, grunted; Tony attempted to smile; Dunski frowned a little at the cards. "We can deal again," she said. "We just started this round anyway."

" _You_ aren't dealing cards," Gibbs said shortly. "And Tim can have my hand."

"Aw, Boss," said Tony. It sounded almost like a protest, almost like something recognizably _Tony_. This was definitely not an improvement on Monday, but it wasn't all the way back to Sunday either.

He ended up taking Gibbs' hand, after some negotiations, and Gibbs hung around a little before leaving. Dunski stayed. Tim figured the movies could wait for after she left, but when she did - a couple hours later - Tim figured it could wait for when Tony got tired. In the meantime, Tony was still alert and relatively talkative, enough for Tim to try and get Tony interested in office gossip and - when Tony didn't immediately zone out - try and talk shop.

"So I've been thinking about the Somalia folder," he said, carefully gauging Tony's reaction. There was none. Odd. "I mean, the op is obviously going to be shelved, but the CIA probably won't mind a pile of analysed data, right?"

Tony was still giving him a blank, slightly puzzled look. "What op?" he asked.

"Tony," Tim said carefully, trying to not sound _too_ exasperated, "this is your op."

"What op?" Tony repeated. There was nothing blank about his expression anymore, and he'd gone from puzzled to outright confused.

Tim stared at him. He couldn't be. And if he was, then Dunski was a miracle worker. "You're kidding me, right?" he said. "Ha ha, Tony. Very funny."

"Tim," Tony said. His voice was strained, and Tim knew that the distress had to be real because his name was followed by a short bout of cough. He poured a glass of water and handed it over to Tony.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Tony rasped once he stopped coughing.

Tim's blood froze cold. "Saleem Ulman," he said carefully. Not a flicker of recognition across Tony's face. "We were going to go to Somalia to kill him. It was your op. You spearheaded the whole thing, took it up with Vance..." His voice trailed off.

No. No way.

Tony slumped back against his pillows and summed it up: "Well, fuck my life. No, wait."

Tim buried his face in his hands because somehow, despite having somehow forgotten whole months of his life, it was the most Tony sounded like himself since they got him back.

 

* * *

 

She'd brought beers with the pizza. The 2J's steering committee refused to commit on the spot, of course, but the meeting had gone well and Ziva was confident that they would instruct the Southern California chapter to put Ziva and Oren in touch with their suppliers. Another day and, hopefully, they'd be going on a car trip down south.

So she'd brought a six pack with dinner to communicate her optimism, and Oren's eyes lit even if he bitched at the weather being too damn cold to enjoy their drinks on the porch, and Ziva called him a little girl, again, and they bickered like they hadn't in almost six days.

It was only when Oren left to throw out the trash - still grousing at the weather but refusing to sleep in a room that smelled like pizza - that Ziva realized she'd forgotten, for a few hours, that Oren had beaten a thirteen-year-old boy and left him for dead in the fields because the boy's grandmother had thrown acid in one of Oren's soldier's faces, and that boy - only nineteen himself - preferred to die rather than live blinded and disfigured.

It was a good thing that Ziva was alone in the room.

Yael was still maintaining the radio silence that Ziva had started the night she had decided to let Tony catch her, and Ziva was beginning to get stressed. The woman who pulled her off the suicidal Somalia op wasn't the girl Ziva had last truly known eight years before, when their paths separated at the end of basic training, but these many years in the field had only refined the Dunski in her; Ziva found it difficult to believe that Yael would do anything that had any chance of risking the op out of petty vindictiveness. It followed that Yael had to have a reason to risk Ziva thinking she'd been left out in the cold, and as much as she wracked her brain, Ziva couldn't imagine what that reason could possibly be.

Hours later, she still couldn't make sense of it. Ziva lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, half-wishing she hadn't had those beers. She was supposed to be going home this time, she thought. It'd been a nasty shock, when Vance had disbanded Gibbs' team a year before. She'd expected Israel - chaotic, restless Israel - to change, and had followed the news closely enough to have an idea of what she'd be returning to. She still hadn't expected the shock of it, and she certainly hadn't realized how much she'd changed - grown up, become infused with American - until she was among people and places she'd known and who had known her once. She couldn't deal with it; she threw herself into the first op that came her way just to give herself time to think.

She'd met Michael.

And when she was recalled to the US only a few months later, apprehensive at having to go back when she'd only just begun growing her roots again, she had Michael to keep her tethered.

Somalia would've been death, but at least she would've died herself rather than an empty doll carved off the woman she'd once been. She would've died, except one of Yael's cousins was Kidon and happened to be in the country this time. Yael had pulled her off that op and moved Ziva from her father's apartment to Yael's spare room within two days. Ziva spent the whole of the first day sitting on the balcony and staring out at the sea, trying to get used to the feeling of being welcome.

She was supposed to be going home, this time. How did everything go wrong, again?

 

* * *

 

_Wednesday, September 23_

 

Gibbs kept sneaking looks at him. He probably thought Tony didn't notice, but Tony isn't that kind of mentally retarded. He doesn't bother correcting Gibbs or drawing attention to it in any way. If it mattered to Gibbs that Tony was cued to him this way, he would've noticed at some point in the last eight years. So Gibbs kept pretending he wasn't sneaking looks at Tony, and Tony kept pretending to stare out the side window.

He was supposed to be happy, he knows. Relieved, at least. Dr. Pitt discharged him from the hospital not an hour before, announced the fluid accumulation in his lungs to be sufficiently low and steadily decreasing, and said Tony should get out of the hospital before he catches something worse in the hallway.

There was expectation in the serve, for Tony to be glad for leaving. Tony hates hospitals, and he should be happy to be well enough to get out of this one, but for some reason it just felt like an itch. Gibbs' expectation is worse. Gibbs' _disappointment,_ looking at Tony out the corner of his eye like that, is worse.

Tony kept his eyes on the ground on the way from the driveway to the front door. It wasn't even ten feet, and Tony was exhausted and nearly wheezing before he crossed half of that. Gibbs, of course, took his elbow and supported most of his weight. Tony still didn't look at him.

He almost turned back at the door. Almost, because it's never an option and he knows it. He stepped up to the door with Gibbs still holding his elbow mechanically, not showing at all the impulse to turn and run. The impulse didn't connect to his body at all, and Tony knew he should've expected it but there was still a numb shock to the realization.

Gibbs threw the door open and pushed Tony through, and then there was Abby.

"Tony!" the sound of his name shouldn't have been a surprise, or the solidness of Abby's voice or the full-blown tackle of her hug, arms locking around him and it still took Gibbs' hand at his back to stop them from toppling.

"Welcome home!" she continued, in the same cheerful voice. "Or not really home, because this is Gibbs' house, but it's not the hospital, so that's practically the same thing."

He managed to half-lift one arm, but didn't get to hug her back. She was as tall as he, in her boots, and pinning both his arms to his body.

"Hi, Abbs," he managed after a moment.

It was another moment, and then she let go and took a step back, except for one open hand against his upper arm and the way she looked at him. He almost looked down at the floor again, but her hand on his arm was just there.

"Do you want to sit down?" she said.

Like it was a question. He huffed, but his lungs and he were too burnt out for it to be laughter.

They were still standing there when Gibbs came down the stairs. "There's a perfectly good couch," he said, like it didn't matter, the same way his eyes scanned across them as if that didn't matter, either.

Gibbs' living room was decked out in full Abby glory, with glittery banners hanging off the ceiling and balloons floating next to it, and the air decidedly smelled like food. It was nice, really, except Tony's knees were about to give. He wasn't going to get to sit down until he said something, though.

"Yeah," he said, "okay," but his eyes slid to the wall as he said that and tried to move in the general direction of the couch. Abby walked him there, made sure he didn't fall, and Gibbs had the pillows arranged in a nice big pile when Tony finally sat down, trying to not just collapse in a heap of bones.

"Are you hungry?" Abby asked. Her voice blurred into everything else. "I baked a cake. I know it's still morning, but it wouldn't really be a party without cake, would it?"

It took Tony another moment to realize that Abby was standing in front of him, and the hand on his arm was Gibbs', now.

"Cake," he repeated. He only noticed that he was trying to look at her because his gaze keep skidding away. "Yeah."

He's supposed to feel happy, but it just feels like drowning.

 

* * *

 

Abby had thought things would be better once Tony was out of Bethesda - Tony hated hospitals - but everything was still All Wrong. Instead of being happy, Tony was hunched in and scared like she'd never seen him, as if he was being punished, somehow. She put up banners and balloons and made a triple-layer Swiss Chocolate Cake, knowing how much Tony loved her mini-parties and trying to make up for the rest of the team not being there, but if Tony noticed any of it, he hadn't said a word.

Lunch was just as awkward. Gibbs had heated up some soup and Abby had provided the Goldfish crackers to go with it. Tony ate unprompted, and seemed to be doing okay with moving, but he kept his eyes downcast, barely said a word, kept being _Not Tony._

Abby was worried, and she was scared. Ducky had finally given up the after-effects of that horrible drug cocktail; between that, Tim reporting that Tony had somehow lost - that Ziva had made him lose - all his memories about the Somalia op and Tony's behavior, Abby was only getting more frightened with every moment.

Gibbs left after that and Tony fell asleep on the couch - nearly face-planted into the empty bowl, and she'd had to _ask_ if he wanted to nap and then he took so long answering - which left Abby to do the dishes and try to get over sniffling before joining Tony in the living room.

He was still lying on his side on the couch, head resting on the pile of pillows and blanket pulled up to his chin. It was kind of an amusing image, except he was still too pale and gaunt, and he was staring blankly into the distance again when Abby settled herself onto the chair next to the couch.

"Do you want to watch a movie?" Abby offered. "I brought my laptop and some DVDs." She bit her lip and waited for his response, trying not to count the seconds in her head to see how long it took him to reply.

"I dunno."

His tone was flat, exhausted even though he'd just taken a nap, and Tony never said no to a movie. This wasn't a no, exactly, but it was far enough from the yes that she had expected. "I brought a bunch of your favorites. _The Godfather_ , _The Fugitive_ , _Dirty Harry_..." She trailed off expectantly.

Tony's reply was almost prompt, this time, but still flat and still "I don't care."

"Do you not care what we watch, or do you not care if we watch something at all?" she asked.

"Yes."

She tried not to scowl in frustration. She didn't think Tony was being deliberately antagonistic, but he certainly wasn't being very cooperative. "I'll just get the DVDs then and you can see what I brought and decide if there's anything you want to watch. How's that sound?"

Long delay, again, and then all Tony said was: "Whatever."

This time, the frustration did get the better of her. "If you don't want to watch a movie, just say so, Tony."

Surprisingly, that got her a full sentence. "What do you want me to say?" he asked. The flatness got brittle, some sort of emotion rolling under it. "I don't _know._ "

"How can you not know?" she asked, frustration still dripping from every word. "It's just a simple question."

"Well, surprise," Tony said. That emotion was getting closer to the surface, but exhaustion was still masking everything. He pushed himself up on one elbow, trying to sit. "I fail at everything. What'd you expect?" He collapsed against the backrest, pulling the blanket up with him.

Abby stared at him, shocked by his statement. Did he really think that about himself? "You don't fail at everything," she argued. "You're funny and you fight crime and you're, like... one of the best agents in NCIS. And you dress stylish," she added, because that was also true.

His hands clenched around the corners of the blanket. "Yeah. Whatever you say, Abby."

The words and the way he said them made her skin crawl. "Tony!" she protested, blinking quickly. She didn't ask _What's wrong with you?_ Instead she leaned forward and held out her hands for him. "Don't say that," she said, earnest. "You're going to get through this, I promise."

Tony didn't take her hands. Instead he demonstratively pulled his blanket up, and looked away, jaw suddenly clenched.

"Tony?" she asked tentatively when it'd been a long moment and he still hadn't moved.

"Get through this, right." The anger was totally out of left field. His let go of the blanket with his right hand. He lifted it, but about halfway up something crossed his face and his fist closed convulsively, so hard she could see the shock running up his arm. "Right," he repeated, forcing his arm down. The movement of his neck as he turned to look at her seemed forced, too. "Let it go, Abby. Let -" He looked away again, swallowing noticeably. He was breathing hard.

Abby had to swallow her own growing feeling of dread before she could ask: "Let what?"

A muscle in Tony's cheek spasmed. It was a too-long moment before he bit out, still looking sideways: "You should've let me die."

"Don't you dare say that, Anthony DiNozzo!"

His head snapped around and he met her gaze for the first time that day. "What? That you should've all left me to die in peace? I should just go on living on your say-so, is that it?"

Hot tears tracked down her cheeks. "Don't say that, Tony." Her tone turned soft, begging. "We care about you."

"You don't want me," he snapped, definitive. "I don't know what you want, but I'm not it. Stop trying -" His hands clenched in the blanket again, gaze dropping, and for a second his anger seemed to tamper down, but then his eyes snapped up again and he shouted at her: "Just let me die!"

If she hadn't already been crying, she certainly would be now. Pressing a hand to her mouth, Abby got to her feet and fled the room.

 

* * *

 

He'd been curled up on the couch with his back to the room for a while. He'd stared at the stairs for some time, after he'd yelled Abby away, until it fully connected that he'd made Abby cry, had made her run away in tears. He hadn't gone after her: too pathetic, too scared, too busy coughing. Abby hadn't come down again, and eventually Tony curled on his side and pretended to sleep.

The pretence had to have near become true, because when the door opened Tony wasn't sure if it was real or some weird dream. He hadn't heard Abby come downstairs, but there was Abby's voice and maybe another person's, but the second voice - if it was real - spoke too softly and said too little for Tony to be sure he'd heard it, even in a dream. Then the door sounded again, and Abby's voice was gone.

There might have been footsteps, but Tony didn't bother to listen too closely. A moment later, though, someone sat down on the end of the couch. Cassie or Yael, Tony thought: whoever it was didn't seem to weigh enough to be Gibbs, Tim or Ducky. A faint hum, a beep and then a series of clicks revealed that whoever it was, they'd brought a laptop.

A hand settled on Tony's ankle: small hand - definitely a woman's - and cold. He would've frozen if he wasn't already paralyzed with half-sleep.

He was dreaming. He was definitely dreaming, because he knew that melody, that whoever-it-was was humming: Ziva would hum it for herself, over and over again, on days she was the kind of upset she refused to admit to anyone. Tony had once timed it at about forty seconds, before it started repeating. Short.

Then the woman started singing, and the illusion of Ziva was broken. Ziva's voice was rich and a little low; this woman's voice was glass-like and much higher. The Hebrew was accent-less, indicating that it was Yael.

Her hand on his ankle didn't move. The keyboard-clicks came at working-intervals. She repeated that song twice, and then continued to others. Same kind of melody, though: folksy, halfway between sad and comforting. _All the lovely Israeli songs are sad,_ Ziva said once, which seemed odd considering the hip hop she usually listened to. If this was what other Israeli music sounded like, though, then Tony thought he maybe finally understood.

He'd never heard Ziva sing in Hebrew.

Eventually, he rolled onto his back. Yael's hand adjusted as he moved, not leaving his leg for more than a split-second, but her eyes stayed on the ridiculously rugged - probably classified - laptop, and she kept singing.

"Nice voice," he said in the lull between songs.

She glanced at him. "Thanks," she said.

"Ziva likes that song," he said. His heartbeat picked up. _She's not our problem,_ Gibbs had said and eventually Tony had stopped asking, but it was just Yael and him.

Another glance, slightly longer. "Really? I don't recall Riki Gal being a favorite of hers."

"No, I mean - the first one." He tried humming the first few notes at her.

This time, her eyes stayed on him. "Yeah," she agreed and, a beat later: "It's a prayer."

He shifted against the pillows, trying to push himself up a little. "I didn't know Ziva prayed."

Yael's lips twitched, a little. "It's not a canonical prayer." Pause. "The woman who wrote it," she continued before Tony was through debating whether to ask, "she went into the fire. She didn't know if she'd come back. It's a prayer, for prayer to never end."

He was still trying to figure that one out when she said, out of nowhere: "I wasn't with her when Tali was killed."

His heart rate spiked again and, predictably, he coughed. Ziva had only ever mentioned Tali once. All he knew was that Ziva had been sixteen and that Tali had been killed in an attack. No, he knew one other thing: _She was the best of us,_ Ziva had said, _she had compassion._

"It wouldn't have mattered," Yael continued, rubbing her hand slowly, absently, where it was still against his foot. "She was killed on the spot. Ziva managed to stem their grandmother's bleeding, but that didn't matter either. She died within a year. Her husband followed not a month later."

"Why -" he tried to ask between bouts of cough.

She bent forward, put the laptop on the coffee table and then turned with her back to the armrest, knees drawn up, their feet touching under the blanket. She had socks on, thick and fuzzy. Tony's toes closed around the texture instinctively. Yael smiled a little, but the smile came a beat too late, as if she'd had to think about it.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked, once the cough subsided.

"Because the names keep piling up," she told him. "My dead, her dead, yours, my parents', Gibbs'." She shrugged. "Saving people only works on average. If you can't save the ones you love it's not because you're a failure, it's because nobody can."

The anger was back, heavy like a headache. Tony was too exhausted, really, but the anger swelled up anyway. He would've snapped at Yael, but all his words collapsed in the face of the one statement: _I wasn't with her when Tali was killed._

"I hate you," he said finally. It seemed generic enough.

"Get in line," she shot back.

He almost gave her a foul look, but he didn't really want to push her into leaving. Everybody left, eventually. It was enough that he'd made Abby cry.

"So why bother trying?" he asked after a moment.

She shifted a little. Her eyes were like physical pressure, again, but she seemed smaller somehow and when she spoke her voice had lost the hard edge and gained something else. "Because whether or not I know someone has no bearing on their being worth saving."

There was something in her voice that Tony couldn't quite name. "Then what does?" he asked.

Her only answer came as a smile, so slow and asymmetrical it was more of a grimace. It held the same emotion that her voice just did.

_No,_ he wanted to tell her, but his throat locked. She kept doing that to him, pinning him in place, but this was the first time he felt afraid at all. The fear was ridiculous: she was a lean woman curled in a ball at the end of the couch, her hands invisible inside the sleeves of the most conservative sweater he's ever seen and wearing socks so fuzzy they had to be pink or purple or something else that ridiculous. She sang the same song that Ziva did -

_It's a prayer for prayer to never end._

_Oh._ He screwed his eyes shut, trying to not ball his hands in the blanket. He wouldn't cry. Not in front of Yael. Not in front of a woman who had this figured out when she was sixteen. He wouldn't.

Yael put her hand on his knee when she shifted her weight, so he knew she hadn't left. Rather than get up she fitted herself between him and the backrest, somehow, and then under his arm. It was instinctive, to hold her.

On his next breath, he stopped fighting the tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem _Walking to Caesaria_ by [Hannah Szenes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Szenes) has been set to music and [canonized](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-5HJYMzafo). (Link goes to an Ophra Chaza performance - her studio version is extremely popular. Hagar is also fond of the [studio](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWTwGXvOrk) version by [Shuli Natan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuli_Natan) and Kibutz Messilot’s women’s choir.) The poem goes: _"My God, my God/Let it never end:/The sand and the ocean/Water’s whisper/Sky’s brightness/Human prayer."_


	14. Atonement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doing what good can be done with what they’ve got is easier said than done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Advisory:** intense emotional content, including interrogation, depression, PTSD and unspecificied mental conditions.

Tony would've been gratified if she came to say goodnight, judging by that look, but it was not a good habit to encourage. Yael had said goodnight at the bottom of the stairs, and stayed there until Gibbs and he disappeared upstairs. Then she turned around and went to repack her laptop, which had been left on the coffee table all these hours.

It only took seconds, not quite long enough to decide what to do next. After a brief hesitation she left her bag on the other side of the table, where she could easily grab it on the way to the door later, and went to the kitchen. She'd left her coffee kit in Gibbs' freezer, and she knew where the pot was.

The coffee was not yet a minute on the stove when Gibbs' steps sounded down the stairs. She turned her head a little, just a minimal gesture of acknowledgment, and said: "I can still add _hel_ if you're just going to snub the coffee again."

He walked into the kitchen while she spoke. "Pour me a cup and then you can do whatever you want with the rest of it," he replied, pulling down a pair of mugs to put on the counter, one with ‘NCIS' printed across its side and the other with ‘USMC'.

If the relative consideration in his words was a surprise, the tone of his voice was more so. It was a voice that went with long nights and longer lives, and used with the people who'd gone through that with you. She huffed and shook her head, looking at him properly. " _Hel_ 's not like sugar," she said, before picking up the kit and returning it to the freezer.

Gibbs was still standing by the counter when she turned around, watching her with eyes she did not bother reading beyond _weary_. It put them quite close when she returned to the stove, and it would be a good few minutes until the coffee would boil over the first time.

It was silent in Gibbs' kitchen as she watched the coffee, and he watched her.

When he did finally speak, what he said was, "Nice socks."

Her socks were extra-thick, fuzzy, and an intense shade of red. "Thank you," she said. A beat later, she added, "My brother got them for me."

That got him to smile - which he tried to swallow back - and snort. His shoulders dropped a notch, too. Interesting. She didn't stop her shoulders from relaxing a little as well.

A bout of coughing drifted from upstairs. Gibbs tensed again, hands loose at his sides and gaze tracking upwards instinctively. The cough was no wetter than earlier and didn't come again. Gibbs stayed put, but it was evident he had to talk himself out of going upstairs.

She knew the sentiment.

Even when he more-or-less relaxed again, no longer poised to run, a difference was still there. She hadn't seen this side of him since Friday night, in that cell.

The water was finally heating up, the smell of the coffee becoming noticeable.

"Cough's improving," Gibbs said, trying to sound off-hand and failing spectacularly.

It was her turn to snort. "It'd better." She turned sideways, facing him and keeping only a sideways glance on the coffee.

"At least something is."

"Are you watching the same recovery process that I am?" she inquired. "He's made it to anger in less than a week. He might get over the transference within days. There'll be setbacks," she amended. "Psychological recovery is never linear." She didn't add, _You know that._

"Is that coffee ready yet?" he asked.

It was a clear topic break, but they were all tired. She looked at the pot. "It needs to boil over once and then a second simmer."

Predictably, he replied with a scowl.

They were all tired, but she would still be gone within a week, and Tony would still be vulnerable. She raised her gaze back to him. "What you're all not talking about is going to get him hurt," she told him, matter-of-fact. "What any of you don't know, and won't or don't know to ask, is going to hurt him. That's what happened today. In a week, I won't be here to pick up after. You're going to have to learn to talk about it, if you want what's best for him, and you're going to have to make sure everybody else does, too."

He scowled again, and snapped - quietly, so as to not carry upstairs: "You're not the only one who cares about him. Assuming you actually do."

"If I thought you didn't care we wouldn't be talking," she snapped back, just as quietly. "And if you still think I don't -" She'd spent half the afternoon all but cuddled on the couch with Tony; the scent of him still clung to her skin and clothes and wouldn't go away until she showered. She'd sung for him, laid herself as bare, but Gibbs had not been there for that and was, apparently, completely oblivious to the difference of _Yael_ from _Officer Dunski._ She knew her anger was showing, knew she'd just failed to abort a swallow, that this time he could read her emotions on her, but she's been irrevocably _in_ since before that afternoon: since the moment in the hospital when she'd thought _I will not lose this one_ and held Tony's hand, or perhaps even since she'd stood guard in that basement and clamped down on the fury that came with _This is not justified._

"Make up your damn mind already," she hissed.

The first bubbles broke through the surface of the coffee. She turned to the stove - too jerky - snapped the fire shut and moved the pot to a cold spot. She stirred it, demonstratively ignoring Gibbs.

When she turned around from having returned the pot to the stove - smallest fire, turned to minimum - he was in her space, very nearly stepping on her toes and glaring at her from above. "Do I need to remind you how he got hurt?"

"Do I need to remind you who was supposed to be there for him the past few years?" she shot back. _That_ she'd had to find out for herself; nobody seemed aware of it. "And don't tell me you thought it was just grief-depression."

"Don't tell me how to manage my people," he retorted.

"You're no more on the job right now than I am."

"Didn't realize you were capable."

It stung, quite a bit. She could return that with vengeance and - Marine or not - she could break his wrist and send him to the floor, if she wanted to. She was only in this mess because she refused to be that person, though, and she'd go home within a week and everything she'd leave behind would fall to him. Every _one_ she'd leave behind.

To hell if she'd get hurt, so long as she found out if he could do it.

"Who do _I_ need to kill? Ziva?"

"That part of your _orders_?"

She really did want to break his arm, but she'd made it eight years as a HumInt officer without snapping or burning out and she intended to make it a lifetime. "What part," she said through clenched teeth, "of _off the job_ did you not understand?"

The hiss of the bubbles rose, indicating that the coffee was ready. She reached to turn off the fire without otherwise moving, let alone breaking eye contact.

"The Mossad prefers to keep their investments alive," she continued, voice still quiet and furious. "Eli would probably prefer she comes back despite that I pulled her off the suicide run _he_ put her on." She would've continued, but something dark flickered across Gibbs' face.

"I've seen how that man cares for his children," he said.

"If you think I'm like him that way, then _why_ am I standing in your kitchen?"

He broke eye contact, reaching past her to the pot. His voice, when he spoke - pouring coffee into both mugs - was devoid of hostility or wrath, plain life-weary again, but his posture was still stiff and guarded. "Because it's the only way to save both of them."

She picked up the mug that said ‘USMC', and answered, pronouncing the word the proper, Hebrew way: "Amen."

 

* * *

 

_Thursday, September 24_

 

 _Almost,_ Ziva thought, staring into the night.

Oren leaned on the garden fence next to her. "Almost," he said, echoing her thoughts. "Are you sure about this?" He raised his arms before she could say anything. "Forget I asked."

They were in the back yard of Josh and Becky Rosenbaum of Charleston, South Carolina. The South Carolina chapter of the 2J handled a big part of the entire organization's trafficking; the steering committee had strongly suggested that putting Ziva in contact with their suppliers may be to everyone's benefit, and the SC chapter agreed, pending meeting Ziva for themselves. Daniel was safe with his grandparents, for the time being, and Oren was highly sceptical of Ziva's chances of driving from DC to Charleston without attracting the Highway Troopers' attention. Ziva conceded the point, as it was mildly less aggravating to heckle Oren for nine hours than to drive inconspicuously herself.

They'd left DC in the morning and arrived at Charleston in the afternoon. Following a successful meeting with the chapter's leadership, Josh, the chairperson, insisted that they should stay with him and his family. They had a guest room, he said, and their oldest son was away for college. Oren and Ziva would stay with the Rosenbaums until Sunday at the very least; the conflicting weekends made it impossible to schedule a meeting before.

It was Thursday, and on Atonement Eve it should all be over. _Should_ being the operative word: Yael was still maintaining radio silence. Ziva was still flying blind. Yael had to be out there, listening and watching; Benny Shema's group was a genuine security threat, even more dangerous than the Jewish Underground of the 1980s. The silence worried Ziva, though.

They'd been inseparable, once, from preschool through high school and even through basic training. Then they split paths, Yael to officer school and then Unit 504 and Ziva to Mossad training. Young and unattached, Ziva's training had been advanced to an intensity that left room for nothing else; the Second Intifada had made Yael's service hell. They both changed fast, too fast to keep up with one another.

That summer made it plain how much they changed since they'd last knew one another - and yet, it was surprisingly easy. Ziva knew that she was different, though she wasn't sure what Yael saw; time and experience seemed to have made Yael more herself, tempered youthful callousness to efficiency and zeal to a quiet, selfless devotion.

Which was why the silence made no sense: Yael had never been petty, and only turned further from that in the intervening years. There had to be a reason for her silence other than merely giving Ziva a taste of her own medicine. As much as Ziva wracked her mind, though, she couldn't come up with a good enough explanation.

What if Ziva arrived to the meet on Sunday, and no one swooped in to arrest them all? What if this was to become a deep cover, a long-term assignment? It was the only semi-plausible explanation Ziva could come up with and, six days into this phase of the op, she wasn't sure if she could do it. Her life story was her cover and, with each passing day, it became harder to remember what was truth and what was pretence.

She needed Yael, needed _her handler,_ but she was playing a game Ziva did not understand.

Oren shifted, leaning with his forearms against the fence. "At least the weather here's decent."

Ziva snorted softly. Charleston had very much the same weather that Tel Aviv would've had in the same season.

"I don't know how you can do it," Oren continued. "And I'm not just talking the shitty weather."

She shrugged. "If it's necessary."

"It isn't necessary now," he pointed out. "No more orders. You don't have to do this."

"I won't be free in Israel, and you know it," she told him. "Not if I'm supposed to be..."

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. He shrugged, once and awkwardly. "I still can't imagine choosing exile. Being free in our own home, isn't that what this is about?"

Ziva turned around to lean with her back against the fence. "It's not all bad, here," she said, staring at the swing set. "These children won't grow up scanning for terrorists on each bus."

"There's a generation of children in Israel who never needed to learn that, either," Oren pointed out. "The Shin-Beit are mostly doing good work."

"Treating every abandoned purse as a bomb until otherwise proven, then."

"Don't remind me," he said automatically. "I thought I was going to crawl out of my skin at that central station, day we landed. They don't know how to do security, even with their crazy protocols. They won't know what hit them when trouble gets here. It won't be safe here forever. Either the Muslims will shake things up, or the Christians will go back to their old ways. Two thousand years don't go away this easy. They know that," he added, jerking his head towards the house.

She knew it, too, but four years in the States had taught her to value this unselfconscious safety, even as she ridiculed her colleagues for their life-endangering naivete.

_Tony._

The thought hit sudden like a sucker punch. _You were dead,_ he'd said. The way he'd looked at her in that alley and later, again, in his cell: _You were dead._ It hadn't meant anything to her. She'd kept pressing, but he'd told her the truth the first time. She had -

"We should have this," she said, before Oren would ask her what was wrong. "Can you imagine that?"

He laughed. "Truthfully? No."

"Yeah," she said, and the lie - the realization that it was a lie - tasted bitter on her tongue. "Neither can I."

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, September 25_

 

Everybody was really careful to not call it a party, but - Tony thought, looking around at the packed living room - he was pretty sure that it was, actually, a party. For him.

The thought made him a little dizzy, even though he knew that was ridiculous, and _that_ thought quickly led to the litany of _pathetic, useless, nothing but dead weight_ that blotted out everything else _._ Every time that happened, though, either Gibbs or Yael - and one unnerving time, both of them - would suddenly turn around and stare at him. Tony knew he fidgeted each time that happened, cringing on the inside for a second, but it made it impossible to not notice whenever he started wearing grooves inside his head again.

These circular thoughts were no more real than being unable to move, Yael insisted - Ducky insisted, too, and both of them were also of the opinion that if Tony could beat that block in two days then he could also beat this. _That_ thought made him lightheaded and a little sick, made him want to deny and say that no, they had it wrong, he wasn't that guy.

That way lay death, though. He was beginning to get that. He was maybe, sort of, remembering how to care.

Nowadays there was always someone there, whenever Tony looked up. It made some of the thoughts in his head a little less easy to believe, but it also made his gut clench with a cold, hard anger that kept getting out of control - yelling at Abby had been the first incident, not the only one - because where were they before, how could things get this wrong if somebody did give a damn, none of this was all right.

Gibbs just looked tired, and made coffee that tasted like tar; Ducky said _I know,_ and made that funny gesture like he was tempted to hug Tony; Yael looked him in the eye and said _Everything is fucked up_ like it was the day of the week, and Tony was so startled he laughed and kept laughing even long after it hurt.

That was afternoon of the day before. Presently, Tony was sitting in the center of Gibbs' couch with Abby and Tim on either side of him, arguing over the veggie platter that Jimmy had brought; Jimmy was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs that Cassie had dragged over, playing an almost-disturbingly competent game of poker with Cassie and Ducky among the pizza debris; and Gibbs and Yael were in the kitchen, demonstrating the art form of insulting each other's coffee. Again.

It wasn't a bad way to spend a Saturday, really, if one ignored the bizarre and clearly unnatural occurrence of Gibbs hosting a party, for Tony, because Tony got himself so fucked up he got winded climbing a flight of stairs.

Gibbs and Yael both turned their heads and glared at him.

Tim reached across Tony's lap to steal the veggie platter from Abby. Again. Tony plucked it from his hands and leaned forward to put it elsewhere - the coffee table was all but invisible under the pizza boxes and old newspapers - and Cassie half-rose to take it from it.

"Tony!" Tim protested.

"Stop doing that." He froze and his heart rate jumped but he managed somehow to quench both the wince and the cough. Tony capitalized on that determination, and added, trying to make it sound natural: "It's my party."

The room was suddenly more quiet; Tim stared at him, mouth a little slack, and Tony was beginning to wonder if he'd managed to ruin the party, now, when Abby piped up from his other side.

"Of course it is!" Tony didn't manage to turn around and stare at her, because Abby threw her arms around him, hugging him like one of her stuffed toys. "Stop upsetting Tony, Tim!"

"Oh, I'm upsetting Tony all on my own, is that it?" Tim demanded.

"You're all idiots," Gibbs informed them from the kitchen.

Yael, unsurprisingly, glared death at him; Gibbs, also unsurprisingly, ignored that completely.

Ducky sighed, but whatever he was about to say was cut short by the front door pushed open and Agent Fornell, of all people, walking into the room.

He stopped two steps into the room, looked around, and said sarcastically, "Thanks for inviting me to the party."

"Well, gee, Tobias, we were trying to keep away the riffraff," Gibbs replied dryly.

Tony didn't quite pay attention as, next to Gibbs, Yael seemed to disappear before his eyes: she was still there, hadn't vanished into thin air or something, but she was also suddenly _gone,_ face and posture more than expressionless.

"It's a go," she said - but that voice was _wrong,_ Tony thought, it wasn't _Yael_ \- and added, intonation making it half a question: "You didn't text."

"Not all of us are seventeen," Fornell retorted. "Figured I'd find you here, and if you don't have a go bag in your car I'll eat my hat."

"But you don't have a hat," Jimmy said, and promptly wilted under Gibbs' and Fornell's combined glares.

Ducky made a very small sigh.

"My gear's in my car, too" Gibbs said, making to move, even as Tony demanded, through a tight throat: "What's a go?"

Gibbs paused.

"Final lap of this chad gadya," Yael said.

She didn't look at him, though, and Tony's feeling of _wrong, wrong, wrong_ intensified.

"But isn't Chad Gadya a children's song?" Abby asked.

Yael's gaze slid to Abby and sharpened, eyes narrowing slightly. "It's a vicious circle of senseless violence," she said. "Idiomatically, ‘chad gadya' means a long and convoluted story, often filled with such violence."

 _Everything is fucked up,_ she'd said, and Tony thought, _Everything's fucked up right now._

Ducky glanced at Tony and then, sharply, at Yael. "That sounds quite ominous," he said.

Tony didn't like the sentiment crawling in Ducky's voice, but it brought some life back to Yael. "The Lord showing up to kill everybody is not in the tac plan," she said dryly. "Atonement Day or not."

Gibbs gave Tony a particularly intense look. "We're coming back, Tony," he said.

"Monday," Fornell confirmed, and then his voice became pointed. "Assuming we get going today, at some point?"

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "Heard you the first time, Tobias," he said. It was impossible to tell if he or Yael moved first; they both had the synchronicity of soldiers. "Now you sound like our ex-wife."

"One more word, Jethro," Tobias warned. Then he turned to Tony and nodded once, curtly. "Sorry for disrupting your party."

"Yeah," Tony managed. The _Duty calls, and all that jazz_ remained silent in his head. Gibbs and Yael were by the door, shrugging into their jackets. "Yael?"

She paused, and for a second she seemed like _Yael_ again. "Yeah?"

"Are you going to get Ziva?"

Abby's left hand crawled into his right; one of Tim's hands hovered on his shoulder. Tony barely noticed: most of his attention was on Yael.

"I'm doing my best, Tony," she said quietly. She finished pulling her coat on in a single sharp movement, and then she was gone again, with just her intensity echoing behind. "It's all I can promise."

 

* * *

 

_Sunday, September 26_

 

Josh accompanied Ziva and him to the meet, but they took separate cars anyhow. Josh led the way in the sedan, and Oren followed in the Explorer. Ziva, in the passenger seat, had her arms crossed and wore that frozen expression that was her version of a scowl. Oren tried to ignore the sure knowledge that this time she just might relax enough to beat him up over it, and tried to focus on the road instead.

The cabin where the 2J's suppliers conducted their business wasn't out in the middle of nowhere, exactly, but it wasn't somewhere a sedan was really supposed to go, either. About an hour after leaving Charleston, Josh pulled up carefully over the dirt road and Oren followed. There was a bunch of pick-ups there already, half-hidden amid the trees. All Oren could hear when they stepped out of the car was the sounds of halfway-middle-of-nowhere but, given the solid build of the cabin, this seemed about right.

Josh knocked a rhythm on the door, and pushed it right open, walking in.

Something was wrong: Oren realized it before Josh froze. No human voice spilled out of the open door, not even the tense held breath of a halted conversation. A split second later he realized that the room was empty except for a single person, a woman standing directly across from the door, leaning against a table. She wore a sleeveless cargo vest over a t-shirt and matching cargo pants that were not tucked into sneakers which were ill-suited for that purpose anyway. The impression of _Shin-Beit_ was immediate and overwhelming, even before Oren recognized her face.

This was the officer Oren had thought had looked away when he took that scum of a boy out to the fields before he could grow up to be a full-blown terrorist.

It took less than a second for Oren to compile all of this information and realize that they'd been set up. He retreated without turning around, reaching for his gun as he did so. Ziva was at his back; they could do this.

He never made it.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs was alone in the observation room, having sent the techs away for the time being. Unsurprisingly. It was also unsurprising that he hadn't turned around or shifted at all when Leon entered.

Leon came over and stood next to him, hands behind his back.

On the other side of the glass, Ziva David sat in the subject's chair, staring straight ahead. She'd had a jacket when they brought her in, Leon knew, but it was nowhere to be seen. The shirt she was wearing had been chosen with South Carolina weather in mind. There was a full pitcher and a single glass on the table.

"Water," he commented, deceptively neutral. "That's considerate."

Gibbs merely grunted in reply.

"Except I happen to know that the Atonement Day fast begins in a few hours," Leon continued in the same tone, "and that the climate control in that room has been cranked all the way down. Officer Dunski's request."

"Officer David isn't observant. If she wants to drink the water, she will."

"It's an interrogation tactic and you know that, Gibbs." Leon turned a little, facing the agent. "Dunski doesn't give any orders here. You authorized this."

"Your point, Leon?"

"What the hell is going on, Gibbs?" Leon asked bluntly. "Since when are you and Dunski on the same page?" A Dunski would be nothing but extremely good with people, but Gibbs - of all people - should be resilient. The thought that the woman had managed to get to him worried Leon.

"You authorized the joint investigation," Gibbs replied. "Thought you liked it when I play nice."

"I do, but I thought pigs would fly before you ‘played nice' with Dunski, or let anyone you ever called your own be subjected to something like this."

Finally, Gibbs reacted. He stiffened, tossing a scowl at Leon before returning his attention to the woman on the other side of the glass. "Ziva made her bed. Now she has to sleep in it."

 _Has to,_ Leon noted, and not _gets to._ This actually was about just deserts, then, and not about revenge. That was good to know. There was one other thing he noticed. "Is that Ziva or Officer David? Or are you still undecided? Is that what this is about, Gibbs? I don't care what orders you give," he continued, before Gibbs could deliberately sidetrack. "I do care why." Gibbs ought to be able to hear the _I'm worried about you_ in his voice, but Leon knew better than to say that out loud.

Gibbs opened his mouth. Leon knew that look: nothing constructive ever came out of that. "Now, I don't mind waiting until the after-action report to find out what you say your reasons are. And if you're all right with your reasons, right now, then everything's all right."

He turned around walked out before Gibbs could find something really asinine to say. He didn't need to hear it, and he didn't care why Leroy Jethro Gibbs did what he did, so long as he could live with himself after.

 

* * *

 

_Monday, September 27_

 

She sent away the tech who'd been there overnight when she entered the observation room in the morning. The tech was not one she'd seen the day before, but apparently he'd been properly debriefed. Then she sat down and reviewed the recordings. Her first glance when she'd stepped in revealed that Ziva had not touched the glass and the pitcher, but she was interested in more behavioral detail. Ziva would be aware of being observed and of who would be interpreting the recordings, but that just meant Yael needed to be aware of that, not that conclusions could not be drawn.

Gibbs arrived at some point while she was going through the recordings. The scent of coffee was particularly strong, indicating that he'd brought a cup. She ignored him, and he did the same.

Eventually, though, she finished her review and turned the surveillance off. Gibbs was standing when she turned around in the chair, angled - she couldn't but notice - in a way that enabled him to keep both the glass and her in his field of vision.

She punched in his number as she stood up. "Keep the line open," she said.

He quirked an eyebrow as he accepted the call.

She returned the cell to its clip and said nothing as she walked to the door.

 

* * *

 

Gibbs half-expected Dunski to pull one of her magical transformations between exiting observation and entering interrogation, but she was still as empty-seeming as a regular doll, far beyond the distracted blankness that was her usual mode.

Ziva didn't turn around at the sound of the door but her hands, clearly visible on top of the table, half-balled. Both her instinctive attempt to hide the reaction and deliberate effort to not block it were apparent, if one knew to look for them.

 _Tearing down her own walls,_ Gibbs realized. Of course. There was no reason for Dunski to do that if she could get Ziva to do all the heavy lifting.

Dunski didn't seem to glance at Ziva that Gibbs could notice. She walked behind the chair Ziva was in and leaned against the wall, hands between her back and it. Her gaze refocused - at Ziva's reflection, Gibbs realized a beat later.

When she spoke it was soft, commanding and in Hebrew.

"Ma la'azazel avar lach barosh?"

 

* * *

 

"What the hell were you thinking?"

The tone of Yael's voice made Ziva's gut clench. It was not an interrogation voice - _yet_ , Ziva amended - but there was something more to it than a handler demanding a report, something that hinted at the extent of what Yael was capable of when she deemed it necessary and yet was all wrong for that.

She wanted to close her eyes, block out the sight of Yael's impassive face and slouch, her eyes nothing but darkness in the reflection, but the gesture of submission felt wrong, too hollow. Ziva fixed her eyes on Yael's reflection.

If there'd been any doubt as to what Yael was asking about, the frigid temperatures and the taunting pitcher of water clarified it. She hadn't fasted since she was fifteen, and Yael knew that. The water pitcher was an accusing finger, and a challenge for Ziva to deny the blame.

 _I don't know,_ she almost said, and also _I wasn't._ It would be easier, to say that, but the easier Ziva would try and make this for herself the harder Yael would make it on her, and Yael's opening serve was laughable as torture but threatening as a declaration of intent.

Problem was, she still didn't know. She'd been angry; she'd been more than angry, and for a very long time, she knew that now.

"I'm still thinking about that," she said. The effort it took to say each word, enunciate it clearly, was huge. "I was angry," she said carefully. The irony of her next words was a sick joke and she bent with it, shoulders hunching. "I was envious," she told the table, unable to risk meeting her own eyes in the mirror that wasn't a mirror.

Jealousy and envy were the same word, in Hebrew.

 

* * *

 

 _Ka'asti. Kineti._ The rhythm of the _viduy,_ the prayer of confession, caught Yael unprepared. _Ashamti, bagadti._ No: _Ashamnu, bagadnu._ The _viduy_ was written in the plural and always spoken that way, even when it was between one and the Presence. Mutual responsibility.

 _Should I have known?_ she wondered as Ziva worked herself out and over, laying herself bare with words, voice and body language. Yael had been there to watch what Tali's death - Tali's _murder_ \- had done to Ziva, but she'd been sixteen herself; she'd been there to see what training had brought out in Ziva, but she'd been worn out with sleeping as little as her subjects. But what of last summer? She'd stood in her kitchen and watched Ziva stare at the sea with unseeing eyes; she'd coaxed Ziva to talk of everything she had not been there for, listening for what Ziva hadn't said as well as for what she had. Should she have known that Ziva was unwell, beyond what fresh grief would do?

"He kept not fighting, and I was angry," Ziva was saying. "Angry with him for it even under the drug, and I know - I knew - no one can fight that, but not just then. Tony let me, and I was so," Ziva hung her head, elbows leaning on the table, fingers digging into her scalp as her hands clenched in her hair, "I don't know what I would've done if he fought back; something worse, I suppose. I don't think I even wanted him to resist but I wanted -"

Ziva's breath broke into a sharp, harsh rhythm.

Truth was, she couldn't even know if she should've known. She'd been a lonely woman watching an old friend, not a HumInt officer assessing an asset. What would she have done, even if she'd realized that Ziva could be a danger? She couldn't have let Ziva walk into an op that Shira had said, plainly, was designed to clean house. She wouldn't have been able to let Ziva die if there was an alternative that fell short of a national threat.

"I know I should've told you. I know I was supposed to do that, I knew that, but I didn't - childish, I suppose. I didn't want for you to rescue me. I thought - no, I _decided_ I could do it. Arrogant. Because I didn't want to -" The words were spoken very carefully, very slowly, betraying the magnitude of the tearing-down required to expose them: "I didn't want to need help. I didn't - No one else had the _right,_ this was mine," Ziva curled in over herself as if she would curl into a foetal position, if she could, "I thought mine, mine, Michael, it was allowed for me, and Tony _didn't say no,_ " it was hard to tell from the reflection but Ziva seemed to press both her hands to her mouth, at least one of them balled, "so I blamed that on him, too."

 _And if I had the same choice again?_ Yael thought.

"It doesn't end, it doesn't end." Ziva's voice was raw. "All this pain and all this suffering, it has to be somebody's fault, someone has to be responsible for this. It can't be that shit's just fucked because then why, what's the point? Why even try? I want it to stop, Yael. I want this to end. I do not want to lose anyone more to violence. I do not want to do _this_ again. I do not want," her voice broke she was weeping openly, had been crying for a while, head held between her hands, "I do not want to keep making war because I cannot suffer peace, because I need to - I don't want to -" This was begging. "I want peace, I want to rest." She lifted her head, enough to meet the eyes of Yael's reflection for the first time since this began. The one-way mirror bleached the colour out of Ziva's reflection. "I need to, Yael."

She'd prepared four ways out of this room, and only one of them had the potential to end well for Ziva. Yael pushed herself away from the wall. _Can I do this now?_

 

* * *

 

He didn't understand a damn word in Hebrew, but Ziva's pleading tone was obvious enough. Dunski pushed herself away from the wall and Gibbs watched as she reached past Ziva's shoulder to place a gun on the table.

Neither woman acknowledged the other in any way, not a glance, not a twitch. Ziva remained sitting, unmoving, head bowed, until after the door clicked shut behind Dunski.

It was hard to tell, over the speaker, but he thought he could hear Dunski's breath, as if she took her phone out of its clip and put it to her ear.

He didn't have to let this happen. This was NCIS, not some Israeli dungeon. Ziva was frozen, slow to react, broken down under the weight of her own grief and shame. He could make it into that room before she reached for the gun. He could stop this.

Dunski couldn't be trusted, he knew that. The woman was loyal to nothing but her own inexplicable moral code, talented as she was in convincing others that she shared their goals. He shouldn't let her do this, shouldn't believe a word she'd said, should not trust what he thought he wanted if he'd let her arguments get to him.

He'd loved Ziva, once: the love of a father who saw a daughter in distress, and her father the cause of her hurt. The love of a gunny, to a soldier cheated by their commanding officer. He'd loved her enough to defend her to Vance, to still try to help her when she'd turned away.

It was for that love that Gibbs did not move as Ziva - moving as if in a dream - raised the gun to her head.

 

* * *

 

Yael leaned with her back to the door, forcing the rhythm and depth of each inhale and exhale as she waited. There was nothing for her to do but wait, wait and listen. _And pray,_ added an evaluative process, but Yael thought that if she was not moved to pray in that moment then perhaps she never would be.

It was a thought for later; for now, Yael counted her every breath or she would not be able to tell how long it had been. Then the moment the phone was for:

"Go."

Not a third of a second, to put the phone away, whirl and push the door open. Ziva sat - was still sitting - at the table, staring down at the unloaded gun in her hands, face slack with utter incomprehension that extended to the rest of her body as well.

This time, that Ziva didn't turn or twitch was the product of shock. Yael crossed the distance quickly and pulled the gun out of Ziva's hands, putting it away as she swept Ziva up and into an embrace, holding both of them together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Various Hebrew notes:**  
>  (1) _Hel_ \- Arabic for "cardamom"; adopted into Israeli vernacular.  
>  (2) "To be free people in our homeland" - from the Israeli anthem, HaTikva ("The Hope")  
> (3a) Wikipedia on the [viduy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viduy#Ashamnu.2C_the_short_confession) prayer; this prayer is also part of the Atonement Day canon, and most non-observant Jews (who do not pray daily) associate it with that day  
> (3b) _Ashamti, bagadti_ \- "I am guilty, I have betrayed"; _Ashamnu, bagadnu_ \- "We are guilty, we have [committed] betrayal."


	15. Grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guilt can go to Azazel but responsibility remains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Hebrew note.** There are two ways to express an apology in Hebrew. In female-singular-first person, those are "Ani mitzta'eret" and "Ani mitnatzelet." These translate roughly as "I'm sorry" and "I apologize", respectively. The meaning is about what you'd expect: the former expresses affect, and the latter a formality.

The interrogation room was long empty. Gibbs took Ziva to get a change of clothes and a hot shower. Yael had seen Eli's daughter killed; it was Gibbs' place to resocialize her. They hadn't talked about this: it was the kind of thing Yael could leave to Gibbs' instinctive behavior.

So the adjoining interrogation room had been empty for a while, but Yael was sufficiently confident that she'd be left be in the observation room. Quiet was good. She'd rather run back to back interrogations until she collapsed from sheer physical exhaustion than repeat the morning's performance.

The door creaked open.

The chair was angled to the glass, requiring her to tip her head ever so slightly to the side to get a full view of the newcomer.

She hadn't expected Dr. Mallard. Yael didn't so much work out the implications, as she already had contingencies prepared beforehand. She watched him move - careful and contained, not so much keeping her in his line of sight as allowing her to keep him in hers - as he pulled himself a chair and sat down, but not - she noticed - as if he intended to stay very long.

"Jethro said I might find you here," he said.

He was watching her carefully, but there was nothing more for him to observe beyond what he already would have. There was no reason for her to expect harm from Dr. Mallard knowing that she was curled up in a chair, alone in the dark.

"He didn't have the time to say much, but from the looks of it, you've all had quite the morning."

She didn't look at him, exactly, but she wasn't avoiding him, either.

"It's usually quiet in Autopsy as well. Well, peaceful." He threw in a small chuckle that was quite obviously fake, if a sincere attempt. "I do tend to fill the silence. There's also a bottle of cognac that could use some company." He dropped the mellow front; the look he gave her was quite sharp, and probably meant to appear that piercing. "You could use that, from the look of you."

She only didn't physically startle because she'd lost those instinctive reactions years before. There was nothing out of character in his demeanor or proposal, but she was surprised that he'd drawn her into his circle of care.

"It's Atonement Day," she said. Instinctively she cast back, searching through her photo-sharp memories of the morning: yes, these were the first words she spoke since she'd entered the interrogation room hours earlier.

He waived it off. "Medical reasons."

This was neither easy nor obvious for him. The signs of anxiousness were there, if expertly concealed: relative abruptness of his gesticulation, slightly increased tension in his posture and the way he sat, as if he wasn't sure he'd be staying or - she amended her earlier interpretation - as if wondering whether he should've come at all. She didn't want to have to turn down anything, if he was offering; and she knew she could use being soothed. Her backup, loaded, burned against her leg.

And yet.

She turned her head. She knew that he followed her gaze and when he noticed the water pitcher and glass because he uttered a soft, "Oh," which was promptly followed by: "You fast together."

She turned back her head, and found him already looking at her, considering her. "Yes," she said simply.

"You do feel responsible," he said, as if it was a revelation.

That hurt. She wasn't sure if it showed.

"Her blame," she said, electing to use the odd-sounding structure as it was closer to the Hebrew, to what she meant, "my responsibility."

"Interesting distinction," he said, and she almost wanted to smile because that was the aspect of him that acted as a therapist.

"A necessary one," she replied. After a moment, she said, "In ancient times, the priests would take a billy goat, and perform a ritual to transfer the People's sin unto the goat. Then the goat would be taken to the desert and chased there, to the demon of the desert, to Azazel."

"A scapegoat."

She shrugged. "Another billy goat carried the People's good deeds. That one was killed at the altar. Nowadays people wring the neck of a chicken in _kaparot,_ in atonement, or give money to charity. Either way, though, the ritual does not stand in the place of the fast." _Guilt can go to Azazel but responsibility remains,_ she meant, and _Mutual responsibility does not preclude personal responsibility;_ Dr. Mallard could be trusted to pick up on those. Then she continued, just as factual but more quietly: "And nothing done before the Presence can atone for a sin done unto another person. Only that person holds that power."

 

* * *

 

Gibbs led her to the decontamination showers. It made sense, as the gym showers were never not busy but, even exhausted as she was, Ziva was not unaware of the irony. Decontamination, indeed. The duffel bag he'd handed her had almost certainly been packed by Yael, though. Ziva realized that as soon as she opened it and saw the stark whiteness of the hoodie. She got lost for a few minutes staring at it, and then shook herself, took the shower kit and the towel and headed into one of the stalls.

She came back to the clothes later. They were new. She should have realized that - she and Yael were not the same size - but it didn't quite occur to her until she touched the cotton. She spread the clothes out before dressing. Everything but the jeans was white, fitting of the day, and the newness of the clothes made it feel like Passover, like spring and freedom.

She dressed slowly.

Gibbs was waiting for her in the staging area outside the showers. Ziva was unsurprised at being allowed only the minimal privacy to shower and dress. She was acutely aware of her not being able to raise her eyes anywhere near his face, but if there was ever a time for not being able to meet someone's gaze then this one was it.

She didn't deserve any kindness, any compassion from Gibbs. She was still struggling to process the unloaded gun, but this she knew.

"I am sorry," she said. Her voice was too quiet, but that was just as well. "I am sorry for many things." She took a deep breath. Gibbs grunted, but he did not tell her to not apologize. That, too, was just as well.

She started from the beginning, as much as she knew where that was. "I am sorry for what I said to you in May and," she had to stop for a moment, "for the choice I made. My reasons - my reasons were wrong. My -" she couldn't make herself say _my father_. "He made it about loyalty, loyalty to Israel. I think, now, that he was," _envious, like I was,_ "scared of you. I gave in without thinking, without," she closed her eyes, even though she was looking at the tile. "I should have known better. Should have trusted better. Grief is no excuse for that.

"Grief is also no excuse for what I did -" she pressed her palms to her mouth on instinct, breathing hard. It was a long moment before she could remove them. She opened her eyes. "Tony," she said, letting his name carry everything. "I - I do not -" Another long moment. "I was wrong for being angry with him. I understand that, now. Grief does not excuse that and it does not excuse -" She was trembling, hands clenching and unclenching futilely at her sides, head still bowed. "Something is wrong with me," she said, and this time her voice came much clearer, somewhat louder. "Something has been wrong with me for a very long time. I'm only beginning to - " The words tasted of blood and gun metal as she said: "I can only believe I should not be dead now if I trust Yael's judgment over my own completely."

There was a moment of silence before Gibbs finally spoke. "Not me you need to apologize to."

She swallowed hard. "Not only you," she said, voice too soft again.

His footsteps on the tile were clear, but she didn't realize he stepped towards her and not away from her until he tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. She couldn't help the flinch, light as his touch was. She was still trembling.

"Hey," he said. His voice was as gentle as his touch. It made as much sense as Yael handing her an empty gun after going to all that trouble. "One step at a time."

She opened her mouth to say something - perhaps a confirmation - but no words came out. Her throat was blocked, her mind empty, the tremors only increasing. Her eyes burned. Mutely, tears began streaming down her face.

Gibbs' hand travelled up from her chin to her cheek, touch still light as his thumb brushed some of her tears away.

"C'mere," he said, and for a moment Ziva did not understand but his hand that was at her face moved around her head, cradling the back of it, the other one tugging gently at her waist as he pulled her close. It still took her another moment to understand, and then it was just his hands and the weight of him that held her up as she collapsed against his chest, silently crying.

 

* * *

 

The sound from the television drifted out into the street, but barely. The curtains had been thrown open to let the sunlight in, so Yael knew that Tim and Tony were on the couch and that lunch had been sandwiches and - most likely - tomato soup. Neither of them noticed her approach before she pushed the front door in, grocery bags hanging off both arms.

The movie was paused before she was through the door. Tim - who was closer to the door - shot to his feet, shoulders squaring back in a nervous gesture that in Yael's experience was reserved for brass and in her opinion deserved for no one; Tony - tucked into the far corner of the couch but sitting straight - barely shifted, but his attention focused and zeroed in on her. He looked better, healthier, despite the worry pinching his face.

"Where's Gibbs?" Tim asked, the nervousness also evident in his voice.

"With Ziva," Yael said, letting the door close behind her. Tony got promptly to his feet. Both he and Tim followed her to the kitchen. "They'll be around later," she added as she put the bags down on the kitchen table and began unpacking. She pointed Tim to the soft drinks. "Put these in the fridge, would you?"

Tim did so, but not without half-frowning and asking: "Did Gibbs ask you to do his grocery shopping for him?"

"It's for fastbreaking," she said evenly as she put the cookies and crackers away for the time being.

"Who's been fasting?" Tim asked, still confused.

This warranted raising her eyebrows at him. "Seven of ten non-observant Israeli Jews fast on Atonement Day," she informed him. She has not fasted since the year she'd turned twelve and was first allowed to, but there was no need to tell him that.

His cheeks flushed pink. "Oh. Sorry. I just thought... well, Ziva never fasts."

Yael deliberately considered the stack of high-calorie, easily digestible foods, clearly too much for a single person. "This year she does, too." Tony has been standing slightly to the side, watching her intently, more present and seemingly clear-headed than she'd seen him yet. She turned to him, forcing her body out of the professional stance. "How was your Sunday?"

"What happened?" Tony asked instead. His voice a little too rough - he might have not said more than half a dozen words since morning, if Tim was the one with him - and the edge of worry evident. It was almost like a concern for a friend, though, and much less like the stark desperation of a week before.

"The traffickers and the 2J were apprehended by the FBI," she said, "as were Oren Shimoni and Daniel Singer, though they will be extradited to Israel later. The rest of the Shema group will be apprehended in a few hours, when the fast has ended in Israel. The country's effectively shut down for now." She paused, but continued before he could ask again. "We retrieved Ziva. Gibbs and she should be here before sunset."

There were words she didn't say in that pause. _There are some things I need to tell you,_ and _This was my op, Tony. I put her there. I didn't pull you out. I didn't okay this, but I put intelligence gain before your safety. I am sorry._ And words she knew better than to want to say, though they were true: _I'd do it all again, but I am sorry._ She wouldn't say any of it, though, not this year; not when it was _I need to tell you_ and not yet _You need to know._ In a year, if they would still be in each other's lives then, or in two: however long it would take. And then she would apologize for the delay and the omission as well.

Tim startled. "He's bringing her here?" he asked, shooting a concerned glance at Tony, who failed to notice, still locked on Yael.

"For fastbreaking," she said, not looking at Tim. Her focus hasn't wavered, either. Tony had already gained some minimal ability to protect his emotions by Saturday, and had improved since. The first, overall impression was nervous engagement. Reserve was the top layer - in his shoulders, around his mouth - and then either guilt or shame, closely tied to it; his balance shifted forward, spine straightening and stretching in engaged attention that was for Yael's words, not Yael herself - curiosity; and under that, closely guarded against in his chest and in the crow's feet around his eyes, that naked need. It would take long to recover, she knew, but this was good, this was better.

"Your call, Tony," she told him gently. "You get to call the breaks, at any point."

It was more choice than he expected and more power than he felt ready for: it was evident in the way his posture softened and hunched in, like a small child, and in how wide his eyes became.

"At any point, Tony," she repeated, still soft and gentle. "You don't need to decide now."

He nodded once, slowly and hesitantly, but not - she thought - tentatively. He still looked off-balance and on edge, but not pleading and not as vulnerable.

 _Good enough,_ she thought. Tim was in the room, but to hell with that. She'd been away from home too long; even daily phone calls were only a poor substitute, and the brightness of Autopsy and the sunlight outside - always unseasonably warm, on Atonement Day - hadn't done a thing to thaw the cold of interrogation that got lodged under her skin like shards of ice.

It was for her as much as it was for him, to stand on tiptoe and wrap her arms around his neck in the first half of a hug. It took Tony a moment to put his arms around her but there was no stress in the delay, no fear; it was just the pause of recalling something long disused. This was all right.

In this one thing, at least, there was no harm.

 

* * *

 

Tony was fairly certain that McGee was cheating, but he didn't care enough to call him on it. He was more focused on the front door; he wasn't sure how deliberate it had been that his chair at the kitchen table had a clear view of the front entryway, but he'd come downstairs from his shower to find the game set up and McGee and Yael already sitting. He was only half paying attention to the game anyway, and if Yael hadn't figured out that Colonel Mustard had killed Mr. Boddy in the the lounge with the rope in the first five minutes of game play, Tony would swallow a game piece whole.

He fiddled with the cuff of his long-sleeved shirt, only half-listening to McGee and Yael. The sun would be setting soon; Yael had said that Gibbs and Ziva would be coming home before dark. There was no way of knowing what would happen, but a hundred different scenarios still plagued him.

"Your roll," McGee said, handing Tony the die. He took it.

 _Your call,_ Yael had said earlier. His call; yet another choice he was supposed to be making. _Which movie do you want to watch, Tony? Do you want eggs or waffles, Tony?_ He still mostly didn't care, but he was getting less likely to balk at being asked. This choice, he was still tempted to ask Yael to make for him. He couldn't think clearly about what would happen when Ziva was there.

His last clear memory of Ziva was of her hand, carding through his hair; he still had to fight off the impulse to reach up and retrace the path of her fingers with his own. He remembered leaning against Ziva, Ziva sitting with him, speaking softly, and he could almost taste the chocolate whenever he thought of that. Before that had been the long darkness, though, and before that the sharp prick of a needle in his arm and Ziva, Ziva angry, Ziva slapping him hard, calling him a liar again and again, and before that there was the strain in his neck and gravel under his knees in a dark alley, and more darkness, and his eyes watering in the harsh Israeli sun with the concrete hard and warm against his back and a gun pressed to his chest, his leg. It had been Ziva between him and the sun, Ziva holding that gun.

Ziva backlit by the sun, in the entryway of Gibbs' house.

He blinked several times but she was still standing there; still just standing there, gaze fixed on the floor, hands curled loosely at her sides and her shoulders slightly raised. The curly mess of her hair and the clean, white hoodie made her seem young. Younger.

Gibbs stepped back from the living room, casting a glance towards the kitchen. Ziva's shoulders hitched higher, but she still hadn't looked up.

Gibbs was just a shadow in his peripheral vision. Tony felt frozen, fixated, unable to look and see anything but _Ziva_ until a hand touched his shoulder lightly, startling him into remembering that McGee and Yael were also there. McGee excused himself, the scraping of chair on tile and then footsteps filling the room. Yael was fixed on Tony with a piercing intensity, but that was a question - just a question. Nothing behind it but care.

He looked away from Yael and again at Ziva, but he put his hand below the edge of the table and took Yael's. _You get to call the breaks,_ she'd said. He squeezed her hand, telling her that he remembered, that he understood.

He barely registered her returning the squeeze or Gibbs touching Ziva's shoulder because these took maybe a split-second and then Ziva looked up. He was caught off-balance first by the eye contact, and then by how _human_ she seemed. This wasn't the woman who'd carelessly sat down at Kate's desk or the one who'd struck him down and held him or even the one he'd missed like breathing all the past summer.

Then her eyes slid sideways and Tony had to struggle to breathe, as if he'd just nearly drowned. He had maybe a second to try and get a grip before Ziva looked back again from Yael to him. This time she didn't quite make eye contact and Tony tried to focus on breathing, to keep breathing and not too shallowly.

Ziva moved, and only then Tony noticed that Gibbs had disappeared, too. Ziva's first steps were hesitant but her last three steps up to the kitchen table could have been a stride if they weren't so small. Her shoulders were too straight, forced, back stiff and tilting her chin up, just a little. It was like seeing double, half his mind seeing the Mossad spy he knew and half insisting that this was just a show, brittle and this close to snapping.

Her eyes skidded to Yael, again, and when they found his it was still like seeing a stranger: no anger directed at him, no hatred, no venomous and inexplicable resentment. There had never not been a coat of bitter resentment clinging to Ziva's every action and every word; he'd built up a thousand different women under her shell, but this was like facing a stranger.

"I know it isn't -" she began, and then paused and held in a breath before speaking again. "I'm not seeking forgiveness," she said, slowly and carefully. "I'm so- ani mitzta'eret, I'm so sorry."

He would probably never be able to understand all of the intricacies of her language, but he'd had four years to learn some of the basics. Usually when Ziva apologized in Hebrew she was being sarcastic, but that was a different phrase, even if it sounded nearly identical. This was a phrase she'd only used when she was so tired as to slip into Hebrew.

Today was Atonement Day. Yael had reminded him earlier. He understood just enough to know that Atonement Day was a whole lot more complex than he'd thought before Ziva had tried to explain it, but that was also enough to know that this was wrong. Asking forgiveness was part of the package, and it wasn't just God you were supposed to be talking to. It was an alien concept to wrap his mind around, having grown up with the idea of confession being between a person and God with a priest as an intermediary, but the Old Testament God wouldn't forgive where it was a person's place to do so.

Was Ziva not asking for forgiveness because she didn't think she needed it, or because she thought she had no place asking for it?

Maybe he wasn't breathing okay despite trying; things felt unreal. "Ziva," he said, and stopped. Her name had been a prayer just a few weeks before, and lately it had become a curse. Now it was just a name, though, magic stripped away like with this woman that was and wasn't Ziva. He had no idea what it meant, anymore.

Yael's hand tightened around his, just enough to remind him that she was there and that he wasn't alone, that he was the one calling the shots, this time.

It still took a moment to find any words at all, and he still had to swallow before he could speak. "Sit?"

It wasn't forgiveness. He didn't know if he could do that; wasn't even sure what he would be forgiving her for. This, though, this was tangible. This he could do.

Ziva didn't move, her eyes going wide in shock. Just as he was about to say _Please_ , though, Yael muttered "Oh, lema'an hashem," and stood up, letting go of his hand. She walked over to Ziva and pulled her in for a fierce, brief hug before guiding her over to the chair across from Tony and crashing into the chair between them, putting her elbows on the table - knocking Colonel Mustard and Professor Plum off the game board in the process - and putting her face between her hands.

"For the record," she said after a moment, "we're all idiots."

"Speak for yourself," Tony said. The words were out of his mouth before he had even thought about saying something. His breath caught and his body tensed as he waited for a reaction that never came. Ziva didn't even blink.

Yael laughed wryly as she reached out towards both of them. Her hand was warm as she took his left hand into her right, bringing it up to her forehead. She did the same with Ziva's right, and Tony started when his and Ziva's fingers brushed against each other. The laughter cut off abruptly with a shaky inhale, and Tony realized just how close to tears Yael was.

Ziva startled for some reason, eyes going from Yael to him and then back to Yael. She just looked at Yael for several seconds and then, moving very slowly, leaned forward to rest her forehead against Yael's temple. He continued to hold Yael's hand, steady and solid, and a long moment passed before Tony realized he was crying.

 

* * *

 

Ziva had gone 36 hours without food, before; she'd gone even longer. She'd never gone this long without water, though. Her head had already been pounding when Gibbs had woken her up from that nap, before they came here. By the time Yael got up from the kitchen table, put both their hands down - still next to each other - and went to bang on the basement door, things had long begun to feel as if she had not slept in seventy hours. At least the headache didn't bother her as much, floating as she was.

Gibbs had sent Tim away, and the three of them to the couch. Yael fell asleep as soon as they settled down, her back leaning against Tony and her legs pressed against Ziva, who let her own head roll back. She didn't even notice that she was humming until Tony said, "Yael sings that."

"She loves to sing," Ziva said. She spoke without thought, but she'd seen the way Yael moved next to Tony, and he just said that she sang for him. Singing was intensely intimate, for Yael. She would sing with family and their basic training company, but Ziva had never heard her sing for anyone else.

She wanted to tell Tony that, what it meant. Watching the way Tony's arm cradled Yael and how they rested against each other, Ziva thought that she didn't have to.

"She says it's a prayer," Tony said.

Ziva had always tried to pretend away the song's first words. "I suppose that it is."

"There's another song she sings a lot." Tony fiddled with the edge of Yael's sweater; Yael, unsurprisingly, didn't stir. He began to hum the song but then cut himself off. "I think she said you don't like the singer -"

"Tony," she said. She couldn't hear that from him, that tone of voice - anxious, afraid. She forced herself to say "It's all right," and forced her voice to be steady, waited until his body relaxed again and the fear drained away from his face. Yael had certainly nearly woken at _that._

Tony calmed down enough for Yael to not wake - Ziva's growling stomach clenched harder at the thought of what would've happened if Yael had woken up to Tony upset and Ziva the cause of it - but some concern remained. "She wouldn't say what it's about," he said, nearly inaudible.

Ziva swallowed. The few notes he'd hummed were enough for her to recognize the song. She could try and explain, but -

It took her a few moments to organize the words inside her head. "Far, far away, where both sky and desert end, there's a place full of wildflowers. It's a small place, miserable and mad, and it's full of worry. It's where they speak of what will be and think of what had been, where God sits and watches and worries over all that He has made. Don't pick the wildflowers, don't -" Her voice broke. She'd dug her nails into her palms as she forced herself to watch Tony, to see each and every emotion that flitted across his face as she recited the words.

"Oh."

Too many emotions; Ziva couldn't begin to decipher his voice. She swallowed, but did not let herself look away. The metaphor brought up another song, _For man is like a tree; like the tree, he thirsts,_ and she latched on to that before the angry, scared impulse to make the onslaught of someone else's emotions _stop_ could return.

When Gibbs came to fetch them Yael was still asleep, Tony nearly so and Ziva long hoarse.

It was only barely sunset when they sat at the table, but that was Yael's call, and Yael put a large juice bottle by Ziva's plate and cracked her own open, draining half a liter in the first, long gulp. Ziva did the same and then started on the garlic bread, slowly, waiting to see how her body would react before she tried the pasta.

The food would take at least half an hour to be sufficiently digested, but the effect from the juice was almost instantaneous. By the time they finished eating - Tony ate as slowly as her - her head had been clear for a while. Ziva glanced around the table, though it was still easier to not look directly at anyone. If someone had told her the day before that this would happen, she would have laughed at them; a month before and she would have scoffed and wondered why she would want it.

It felt good, though. Despite the skittishness still writ large all over Tony, despite the suspiciousness that occasionally broke through Gibbs' permanent scowl, despite Yael slipping into invisibility and only pulling herself out when Tony would flinch at it. They were still sitting at the same table, and it was the table that Tony had invited her to sit at and Yael had led her to - metaphorically as well as literally, Ziva thought.

The table in Gibbs' kitchen, but she was tired, too tired to think of that right then.

Yael got up - touching Tony's arm absentmindedly, idle reassurance - and began gathering the dishes.

"Leave them in the sink, I'll deal with them later," Gibbs ordered.

Yael didn't even bother to turn her head as she placed the dishes in the sink and opened the tap. "You cooked," she pointed out.

"I'd noticed," he said, tone dry. "The dishes can wait."

"Is that code for being a bad guest and leaving you the dishes?" she replied, just as dryly.

Gibbs' tone was deceptively mild as he said, "My house, my rules."

Yael turned off the tap, toweled off her hands and turned around to regard him, leaning back against the sink. "Accepting help may not be a bad behavior to model," she said, very dryly.

"Probably," Gibbs replied just as dryly.

They were being ridiculous, and Ziva was fairly certain that they could go at it all night. "One washes, one dries," she said, waving her hand at them. "Simple, yes?"

For a second she wondered if she'd done something wrong, but then Tony snorted and put his head down on the table, over his crossed arms. It could have been a defeatist gesture but Tony's shoulders were straight and relaxed, and that made the posture seem more amused than anything.

Tony picked his head up again and looked at Ziva. "Them? Simple?"

She wanted to retort, to not let this fragile thing drop, but Tony and she were looking straight at each other and it was easy, like the banter and the muscles around Tony's mouth that were very nearly a smile, and she couldn't breathe. Her eyes burned.

Gibbs pushed himself up, walked over to the sink and attempted to nudge Yael away from it by shouldering her aside. One and a half times her weight or not, she absorbed the force of it without shifting. "Sit down before you fall down, Dunski."

Ziva still couldn't breathe. She knew that tone of Gibbs', that stance of his: he acted this way with other soldiers, when he was on their side. Yael was fundamentally an officer, but the IDF and the US military were so different -

Yael didn't budge. She bumped Gibbs' shoulder in return, but the gesture was light, playful. "I thought we were being good role models?"

Gibbs, surprisingly, seemed thoroughly amused. "Not a chance in hell."

That was off, somehow. Since when did Gibbs -

Tony stared at them and snorted, but the snort morphed at the tail end of it, turning into a chuckle.

Yael turned her head to Gibbs, and so Ziva could see that her lips were twitching. "Aren't you supposed to be the responsible one?"

Gibbs smiled again and shrugged.

Yael shook her head, opened the tap and picked up one of the plates. "Just grab a towel."

"I wash, you dry," he said.

Yael's lips twitched again, but she stepped aside. "And people say I'm bossy."

Ziva caught Tony's eye as she coughed out a chuckle. The corner of his mouth twitched upwards.

A second later, they were both laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song that Yael sang in ch.13 and which Ziva translates here is [The Place of Worry](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_znkQ6Cw98) (which in Hebrew is ambiguous with "Room enough to worry"), here in the Riki Gal-Matti Caspi duet, which is one of the canonized versions alongside their solos. (The vid genuinely has nothing to do with the song; it's just the only decent online copy.)


End file.
